Hemlady said:So Maurice then what you are suggesting is that if I purchased the same plant, one grown in Florida and then purchased the very same plant, but from a northern garden, the one from the northern garden would fare better
Sorry, no I am suggesting that if you had dormant cultivars that had been hybridized in a northern garden they would be hardier than dormant cultivars that had been hybridized in a southern garden. It would not matter were the cultivars were purchased. The cultivars could not be the same ones, as some were hybridized in a northern garden and some were hybridized in a southern garden.
If you purchased evergreen cultivars that had been hybridized in a northern garden they would be hardier than evergreen cultivars that had been hybridized in a southern garden. Again it would not matter where the cultivars were purchased. Again the cultivars would be different ones as they were hybridized by different people in different locations.
Hemlady said:if I purchased the same plant, one grown in Florida and then purchased the very same plant, but from a northern garden, the one from the northern garden would fare better
This is a different idea. In daylilies we have no objective, published scientific evidence for this sort of adaptation to winter. It is
theoretically possible that the same plant grown in a southern garden may be less hardy than if it had been grown for several years in a northern garden. I have had something happen to some plants that I purchased from southern locations that seems to suggest that this type of effect might possibly cause daylilies to respond differently to growing conditions. I have purchased daylilies from southern gardens and planted them early in the spring in my garden. They seem to grow well during the rest of the year. Unfortunately in the next spring they seem to have an unidentified problem (spring sickness? winter tenderness? unknown????) and the fans die. The crown then sprouts new tiny fans. It takes many years for the tiny fans to grow to flowering size (normal in my growing conditions) but the cultivar never has the unidentified problem again. This seems to suggest that the southern grown plant was not adapted to cold winters the first year and suffered but became adapted and never suffered again. A possible explanation. However, there is some evidence that it is not the correct explanation. If I dig up that now apparently successful cultivar in the spring and plant it back in the same spot (or move it to another spot) then after the next winter the newly sprouted fans die (just as they did after the first winter). Usually, because the plant is now a clump and not just two fans, not every single fan dies and the clump survives more easily than it did that first year.
