Gerry - Go for it! If you live to be 92, then you still have almost 30 more years to do some serious hybridizing!
Michele - I live in Florida, too. Does it only take 1-2 years for most blooms to stabilize here in Florida? Or is 3 years the true test? I am thinking of Fred's "LILLIAN'S DONNA ANN MANNING". It sure changed each year. And the yellow really came out in the 3rd year along with a smaller eye. (I really like the larger eye on some cultivars. Something "new" to me...) And that yellow streaking in your "ugly, discarded" daylily actually fascinated me. I, personally, would probably grow it out another year or even two just to see what happens to that streaking in the petals. Too me it looked kinda cool! (I guess there is no accounting for taste, as it didn't look ugly to me. LOL!)
I am sitting here thinking that probably ALL of my home-grown hybrid daylilies would be tossed by most hybridizer's standards! I don't have a named and registered daylily in the bunch and I don't know if any would even be worthy of naming and registering. I probably have about 150 currently growing. Some will die off as I always lose some every year that were 1 year or 2 year old plants. But the rest do well here in my raised beds. I am curious to see how many survive in the new front border. I have about 80 recently planted there. I've often wondered if some of the ones that I lose ... died for the same reasons you mentioned, particularly that they were crowded out and failed to thrive due to that issue. The seedlings are often crowded together. Some seem to grow faster than others. I don't watch over them that closely. When you have so many growing, I figure that the strong will survive and any that don't ... weren't meant to be! They have to be tough to survive in Florida with all the pests, diseases, and often drought conditions.
It bothers me that whenever I see daylilies for sale locally, that they are always plain yellow no-name daylilies. I don't get that! Always yellow. They do grow well here, but why only yellow? I've never understood that.
Fred - Thank you for posting your cultivar photos to show the blooms each year as your keeper daylilies changed before finally stabilizing. So fascinating to see those photos! For you to be tossing so many, you must have particular qualities and characteristics that you are striving for.
All this is making me take a closer look at my own daylilies as well as others. Before all of this information, a daylily was a daylily ... all with similar traits. Now I see more of the differences. I think I just graduated to the next level of growing daylilies. (Still a kindergardener or 1st grader, though!)
I like them all ... the good and the bad. Which is why I keep them all and just add more around my yard.
