At some point in 2000-2001, I bought a daylily at Lowe's Home Improvement. It had a tag that said Maya Purple (which I've since lost).
I planted it in the ground, where it lived for about a decade before being dug up due to my precipitous change of residence. It spent a year in a bag of sand, and was then potted at some point between 2012 and 2013.
The point of all this is that time hasn't been kind to this plant, which until yesterday was a NoID purchased under an alternate name.
That said, this plant is very vigorous in my Zone 7b garden.
The increase is significant, with the clumps expanding outward in a neat circle. The increase/crowding hasn't seemed to hamper blooming thus far.
After many years of trying to ID this cultivar, I ran across a thumbnail image of Black Plush yesterday. I thought, "That's it!" I read the details (few, given this cultivar's age) and looked up growers' online listings. Other than the fact that my plants' scapes haven't quite reached the registered height of 32", everything matches. Even the fact that this 1955 cultivar won an award in 2003 seems to support that it was mass-marketed in the years leading up to that.
Here are the clumps on March 1 and March 19 of 2020:
And here's one of those clumps now:
As far as bloom goes, it's prolific for a short while. I'm not sure of the bud count per scape, but I'd say it's low. The number of scapes per clump is high, though. I'll add some flower pics soon, but for now I'm out of time!
