Welcome Peachlily (Once you see this
)
It is the responsibility of the hybridizer to submit photos of the daylily to the AHS when registering them. Now back in the day when there was no digital technology I would assume it was extremely hard and/or time consuming to take a photo have it developed (or whatever else may have had to be done) send it in and then the AHS would have to (I assuming here) scan it into the computer and so on.
It is a requirement now to send in photos, but if it's not formatted correctly or whatever it may not be able to be added to the data base (this is why some newer ones may not have photos).
I do know that there are people trying to get photos of the ones not in the data base because I was asked if they could use one of my photos of an older one. It will take time to get permission from different people to use photos once they find some to use.
No not all of those daylilies are still in existance. As much as I'm sure some people would love to do it, it would just be too much trying to track down each and every one of the 72,000 plus daylilies to grow not to mention the room to grow them plus the cost to do so. Some have never made it past the hybridizers gardens or the person who registered them so if they didn't keep them up then they are more than likely no where to be found. Or they were registered and then for some reason decided to die and were never released to anyone. Some people do have heirloom daylilies in their display gardens (it may be a requirement to have some) and their was an Arbortorium (maybe the National Arbortorium) that had a lot of heirloom daylilies but (with lack of funding I think) a lot of things were done away with there (not just daylilies).
If I am incorrect on any of this PLEASE someone set me straight
But again a great big WELCOME
