What I seem to recall some people doing is leave all the dead scapes on to do the bud count. When flowering is finished, or maybe even later, they then count bud scars and scapes and take the average.
There was a study done some time ago that also pertains to this discussion. It is discussed in the AHS 2002 Handbook (a very useful book). In shade they noted flower bud length and opening was not affected by shade but in shade more buds blasted, number of flowers per scape was lower on average, plants started flowering later (by 7 to 12 days), the period of flowering was shorter, fewer new fans, plus a few other things that aren't really relevant to this discussion ("Shading" on pages 130 to 131 for anyone who has the book).
To be honest, as a non-hybridizer I pay zero attention to bud count. I'm with Julie on the following:
floota said:Also with bud count,when instructing judges, I refer to bud placement rather than bud count!!! What is the point of having a high bud count if the cultivar is top branched or if the buds are so crowded that half of the blooms can't open properly? Also, some hybridizers will register cultivars with minimal bud count .(12-13) if the cultivar has a high proportion of scapes per fan.
I've seen daylilies with so many buds that the new ones couldn't open and the soggy remains of the old ones were draped all over them, not pretty. Also, as is currently being discussed on another forum, I'd rather have a daylily that bloomed for a longer period of time and maybe had more scapes with well-placed flowers, than a smaller number of scapes stuffed with flowers that flowered for a shorter period. Perhaps number of flowers to number of fans rather than scapes would be more useful?
Remember also that the home gardener and landscaper isn't going to be going around dead-heading every day or even at all. So IMHO hybridizers should not dead-head either.
Coincidentally, I was flipping through some old Daylily Journals the other day looking for something else and came across an article by Don Spencer in the Fall 1992 issue entitled "The Self-Grooming Daylily". In the article he criticizes 'Pardon Me', for example, because it is "....particularly demanding of good grooming, partly because it is such a good bloomer but more importantly because the dead flowers take such a long time to drop off". He mentioned Darrel Apps saying at a meeting that hybridizers should pay more attention to producing daylilies that are "better self groomers".
Mr. Spencer noted that some daylilies fold up their dead flowers neatly, keep their colour and fall off within a day or two. (I was removing old flowers the other day to take a photograph and on that particular cultivar it was hard to tell the difference between yesterday's finished bloom and today's that was about to open). He also noted that "With most cultivars, too many withered blooms hang onto the scapes for as many as four to five days before they finally fall off", and then adds "But slaves of their garden who deadhead daily would not be aware of that".
