JamesT said:
Interestingly, Mint Jellies, Sassy Sapphire and Irish Mayhem are all registered as dormants, yet here, they're still growing with the greenest of the evergreens. Guy's Outrageous is supposed to be Sev-Dor, and it's the biggest, greenest plant in the yard. Is this because it's hard to tell a sev from an ev in Florida? Is it a way to sell more plants to northern growers? I grow a lot of dormants, and they're completely underground, most of them have been under since Thanksgiving.

@JamesT
Have you watched Dan Hansen's videos on Youtube that look at trying to identify dormants in Florida? There are four episodes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Thank you for sharing those! I think I understand the definitions better, and Dan's cats were a hoot. "Regardless of climate" is the sticky wicket in my mind, at least. I have several registered as dormants, that really act more like SEV here in 6B, at least to my novice eyes. But anything green, above ground, at this time of year, makes me think SEV/EV. Apparently that's not all there is to this. And hardiness is not tied to plant habit. Hope that's true. I've a lot of SEV/EV seedlings out there that I really want to see bloom this summer. Parents are rated at zones 4 and 5, fingers crossed.

I really enjoyed that, too. Thanks for posting, Maurice.

I am still puzzled by the term 'Pulled down into the ground", I never have actually seen that in relation to dormancy, I do have plants that seem to pull themselves deeper into the ground and have to be raised. But that is not what is being described here, I just assume it means no plant is showing above ground, not that it is really pulled back down into the ground?

Really glad I wouldn't touch Facebook wearing a hazmat suit!

Charley

Seedfork said:I am still puzzled by the term 'Pulled down into the ground", I never have actually seen that in relation to dormancy...

... I just assume it means no plant is showing above ground, not that it is really pulled back down into the ground?

That's what I took from it–just an expression he uses to indicate that the plant was forced into dormancy by the cold.

I watched the videos yesterday, then went out to do a garden survey. I'll try to get my observations posted today.

I took it to mean that the resting bud can be above ground, just not growing. Depending on the level of "antifreeze" the foliage may not be scorched and disappear, until temps fall below it's tolerance level. Which may not happen at all in the south. That would explain the green I still see on some dormants. Maurice, please correct if my interpretation is wrong.

I'm confused by "resting bud". A "bud", to me, has a bloom inside it.

Mary, I was confused by the term (resting bud) as well and had to look it up. "Plants in temperate regions undergo dormancy during which they form a winter resting bud called a hibernaculum" from Wikipedia. Us Northern gardeners are probably not familiar with this in Daylilies or deciduous perennials, I expect our dormant buds are below the soil surface.

So I looked up "Bud", because I think many of use only think of a bud as being the early stage of a bloom, however:
"Bud: a compact growth on a plant that develops into a leaf, flower, or shoot". Now it is easier to think of a resting bud laying there underground just waiting to start growing into a new fan. I went out and looked at my plants and saw a lot of new fans just emerging, I suppose if those buds were not developing into new fans now, then they would be called resting buds.
Edited to add:
Would these plants be correctly referred to as semi-dormants?

@seedfork
I would describe those daylilies as simply having started to sprout. Since they show signs that indicate that they had formed a bud at some time ago then I assume they would be described as having become dormant at that time
.

@Seedfork Larry, from what I understood from the videos, your pictured plants should be termed semi-dormant.

@robinseeds
Unfortunately in some plant species a bud can be "dormant" and then sprout in the autumn but then be "dormant" again. Some daylily cultivars may be able to do that, depending on the weather in the autumn and during the winter. So parts of the fan may be visible above the soil surface.
The problem is that a plant can be "dormant" simply because the temperature is too low for it to grow. If it is not growing then it is "dormant" In that case the technical term is "ecodormant". In the other sort of dormant for a period of time, even if the temperature is not too low the plant will not grow (the bud will not sprout). During that time the bud is described as being "endodormant". In both cases the plant is not growing and therefore is commonly described as "dormant".

But, as Dan said, they did not pull themselves back down into the ground. The foliage died back and the buds started to grow again. I know in the first photo it does look like two of the buds are just emerging from the ground and that could be so, but you can see some of the old dead foliage still on the other larger two.
Maybe the moderator can break this discussion off into a separate thread, seems to have drifted from "Floyd Cove nurseries 2020 Intros"

@beenthere
Yes it is possible for a daylily to have some part of its foliage above ground during winter. Whether that is a "bud" or is not a "bud" is a complicated question. Or whether there is a bud below ground even if there are only a few very short leaves poking above ground is unknown.

The characteristics that are used to register daylilies as "dor", "ev" or "sev" are a MESS.

@seedfork
To effectively "pull" themselves back into the ground again after sprouting would mean that the leaves had died all the way to the crown. It does not indicate whether the crown had formed a new bud or simply stopped growing longer leaves.

To know whether the crown has a bud can only be checked by digging up the crown and looking at the bud/sprout and then watching how the first few leaves develop and what they look like.

This is a dormant bud. The leaves overlap at the tip. The bud has not started to sprout.

In the photo below the first and third buds have not started to sprout yet. They are closed (tip). Therefore they are probably "dormant".
The second bud has started to sprout; it is no longer dormant. It has an "open" top.

Curious why this matters so much, is it because some zones cant take any leaves above ground in winter and can only plant hard dormants. I guess Ive always just thought of things as evergreen, or not. Now if weather mattered, I would see why it important to want to know.

@admmad,
Do you have a photo of a bud at the stage we would say has just started to sprout? I would have thought that a bud showing leaves would have been considered to have sprouted.
I do have to agree..."The characteristics that are used to register daylilies as "dor", "ev" or "sev" are a MESS". I just can't seem to quite figure out the determining factors of the "dor", "ev" or "sev". I seem to be totally confused on the terms semi-dormant, or semi-evergreen.