So you know where I'm coming from ... I think the performance is special but the flowers are old fashioned and unappealing. I would vote not register on both. Thanks in advance for your feedback.

19-093 (Stop the Car x War Horse) 49" MRe 6" SEV Tet - bud builder, 42 buds, 4 branches. This year it started blooming 6/25 and it's still going right now. I haven't counted the buds this year or measured final scape height.



19-124 (Stop the Car x War Horse) 38" MRe 6" Dor Tet - bud builder, 26-30+ buds. 3-4 branches. fragrant. Again, this is still in bloom (started 6/21) and I haven't gotten the final counts.

I love the height, branching and bud count on both. I am pretty partial to bud builders, so I would vote to register them. But I can see what you are saying about the bloom. I like the second one better than the first.

I don't know much about hybridizing, but would it be worth the extra time to cross these with something else to see if you can get better blooms on top of those nice scapes?

Edited to add that either of them can come live in my garden as a seedling. Very nice plants, even if they are just another red:)

I think it depends on what you want out of it, or what you think people want. If you are looking upon registering wanting $50 to $100...and on up, they might be a hard sell. They are a red daylily with great performance.

Although everybody would like a daylily that would bloom everyday. I put daylily people purchasers into 3 categories...1)genetics or uniqueness...usually the highest price.... 2) collectors (name, color, hybridizer, etc)....mid prices.....3)garden performance....lower prices. I prefer preformance...so I am not a grab the newest type of person. I wait to see how it grows for other people. My daylilies average $10 to 15 dollars.

But...a great performer can be a special daylily in its own right. Everybody has one. So if the goal is to have a daylily legacy that includes everyone having one of yours growing in their yard...I think that comes from great performance and lower price point. If registered these daylilies could fit that scenario...again it is what you are wanting to achieve.

I am not bashing hybridizers prices or really wanting to make any negative comment about price...people deserve whatever price they need to stay in business. Period. Gardening is expensive.

Another lesson I learned...this year I was going to be able to share some seedlings...that I was going to register. The Texas freeze killed them all...the more your daylilies get all around the country....if something happens...the more likely you can get some back.

They look like great garden flowers...if you can afford it... register them.

Edit...spelling correction everbody to everybody and everday to everyday.

Many blessings for your success!

I like the second one. But I am partial to bigger throats, and high-contrast flowers.
Although I do like the splotchyness of the first one on the sepals (water damage or real pattern?). Splotchy is hot thesedays.
Having never registered anything I have no opinion on that, however.

Pat both of them are nice. I like the first one for its dark glossy eye. Not to mention, the long bloom time. I agree with Sharon Rose on registering. I have seen some recently registered plants that don't even come close on looks and performance.

Tall, branchy, high bud count, bud builders, decent flower sounds good to me! I think the 2nd one has a better bloom. I do need more tall scapers

I agree with the others. I, too, like the second bloom best. I like the yellow repeating on the sepals.

@daylily99
If you follow the instructions and pay the fee you can register a plant. Many people do it just to name a plant to honor someone, many of those plants really are not worthy of registration in my opinion. I have talked to a very popular hybridizer that told me he had registered some plants and that now looking back on it he wished he had not registered them. So with that in mind, I would think hard about registering a plant that you did not have total confidence in when registering it. I think that is one reason we have so many plants now being registered, people lower their standards just to get something registered.
With that said, many of my favorite daylilies are "old fashioned" but that does not mean unappealing! I have heard several hybridizers saying "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder". That is the case for me on many of the new "modern" daylily blooms.

Very good advice, Larry.

[quote="daylilly99"] I think the performance is special

That's probably your answer. The only thing I would add is that it might be helpful to ask a few others to grow it, especially those who live in the extreme ends of climate conditions. (Think somebody said once that if it will grow well in Oklahoma, it will grow anyplace!)

Personally, I like a range of forms. Keeps things interesting. But there is value in something that can be mass planted by landscapers and city parks departments. And while my town probably isn't going to replace its little gold ones in favor of either of these, I could see it being widely planted in Ames (especially the 2nd one!) or Madison, Wisconsin.

Nothing wrong with honoring somebody with a registration either. My most special daylily is named after my daughter's college roommate, by her grandmother who hybridized it. It just makes me happy to look at it, especially now that I don't get to see its namesake as often.

If you want someone to test grow it in the hot, humid South, I volunteer!

I am one of those growers in Sharon Rose's third category. I grow daylilies I like and think are pretty and have no desire to hybridize or have the latest thing. I enjoy looking at pictures of the modern flowers others here produce--and I admire their efforts. I also have learned a lot and find the threads on hybridizing very interesting.

With that said, the daylilies I buy need to perform, and perform under hot, humid conditions. I have ordered a bunch of new plants this fall, and my #1 priority was rust resistance. #2 was likelihood of growing well in the South, and #3 was how the bloom looked.

I don't know whether or not these plants should be registered. I simply don't know enough to have a valid opinion about that. With that said, I like both of the plants very much and agree that if they perform as advertised, they would be popular with growers like me.

First, THANK YOU EVERYONE for the helpful input.

Larry - " I have talked to a very popular hybridizer that told me he had registered some plants and that now looking back on it he wished he had not registered them."
Absolutely correct. I've been registering daylilies since 2013 and there are one or two (or more) I wish I had never registered and I'm going to start "retiring" them. There are a few I wish I had not registered but just kept using to hybridize with because they have given me some desirable results. I'm learning as I go along and trying to improve on what I do as far as choosing what to register and even what to keep past the first year.

I've been out to the garden this morning and attempted to count the branching and bud scars on the spent scapes. On 19-093, I'm only counting around 25 scars - probably some dried up and are too small to count.

On 19-124, I counted 32 scars and buds on the scape that's blooming right now and it may bud build more. I also counted 5-6 branches.

Both are still blooming today and 19-124 is putting up another new scape. For me it's the prettier flower. I think maybe I'll register this (it costs $20) and charge $35.
I need to line it out when it's done or when it's getting too close to cold weather to wait.

I'll offer 19-093 in my PlantStep catalog for $15.

sounds like a plan, Pat!

Also as an encouragement, people like me who are new to daylilies they are ALL new and exciting. I do not know what an old-fashioned daylily is, really. Just last week I bought one registered in 1964 (Ahoya), and I am so excited for it to arrive. The good thing about fashion is that it goes in loops, and not a straight line. Often I see a new (in time) exciting daylily, to then find out later that it is almost identical to one from decades ago that people have just forgotten about. My example is 'Chew mailpouch tobacco'. Tall and with a red flower (not a fan of yellows and for some reason most of the tall ones seem yellow or pale). I was sure I had to have it. Then I saw another very tall red one from the 1980s a few months later in a random catalog, for a fraction of the price. Looking almost identical! So I put that tobacco on the backburner until I can search out more older ones. Old fashioned does not mean out-of-fashion. Some things always stay classy.

Agreed! And one's garden can start to look very uniform ( in the dull sense) if all you have are brand new plants. I love variety! And Pat, I would buy either one of those. Garden performance is amazingly attractive!

I'm in Oklahoma, so whoever used Oklahoma as a benchmark was about right. I like bright colors. Pale colors in our heat can just blah out in the display area. Orange/red is one of my favorite hot colors. But for me a daylily must be pretty darned colorfast/sunfast in our high temperatures to stay in my collection. Most of the fancy ones are not. A 40 bud count of a bleached out blob is not impressive to me or any of my visitors that come by in the cooler temperatures of late day. I say go for registering either if they have the asset of being colorfast/sunfast and charge a lower price if that seems appropriate........Maryl

Look at this gorgeous bloom. I bought this last year from Pat, along with several other of her seedlings. The others didn't bloom this season but this won is just stunning. I sent the photo to Pat and asked if she wants it back so that she can register it! Everyone deserves a chance to own this beautiful plant. So, if this one didn't make her cut and she is debating about the two reds, then she has really high standards and specific goals. I only paid $5 for this one. I feel like I stole a Rembrandt and got away with it.

Very pretty!

Wow, stunning!

Pat,

The words of Kevin Walek come back to haunt me!! You may remember Kevin from NCDC. He was one of my mentors, and trained me as a garden judge, instructor, and exhibition judge. Hybridizers feared for Kevin to judge the seedling exhibit at shows, for he had the reputation of being merciless, if not brutal with seedlings. He was good at convincing panels to see it his way, and left a trail of white and yellow ribbons, and worst of all, the simple word "judged."

But on reflection, there is a great deal of merit to his argument. The difference from judging a seedling and a registered cultivar in a show is the points given for that ELUSIVE quality, "distinction." There are enough points in the distinction category to bring a seedling that doesn't show distinction in some way ( not always the bloom, can be the scape, the bloom season, the form, size, etc) down to a score low enough to disqualify it from a purple, blue, red, and sometimes even a yellow ribbon.

So here is the question Kevin would ask us to think about when evaluating a seedling: " In what way does this this particular seedling show distinction from ANY OTHER REGISTERED CULTIVAR currently in commerce?" If you can't give a specific answer, then the score must reflect that. I still ask myself this question when judging seedlings in shows, and also when evaluating my own seedlings. It sounds as if you are already very discriminating when registering. I encourage you to continue that. IMHO, there are far too many nondescript plants already in commerce, as evidenced by the fact that so many disappear from commerce after a few years.