The popularity of miniature and small (flower size registrations) diploid versus tetraploid daylilies with time.

This figure is for the miniature and small tetraploid registrations as percentages of the total registrations for each year from 1970 to 2019.

What would be interesting to compare to this would be a chart of the actual number of overall registrations for each decade listed in your chart, and the actual number of registrations of small and miniature daylilies over those same decades.

While I agree that the percentages as related to overall registrations have changed by very small increments, the number of overall registrations has grown, and correspondingly, the number of overall registrations in these categories has grown.

I get the spike in dips in the 80s and 90s. Stella de Oro (Jablonski 1975) was so unbelievably popular and must have been like winning lotto. I can see even today, people just naturally tend to create more of what's popular. Who wouldn't have wanted to take a crack at creating the next small landscaping plant to be found in every parking lot and between every divided highway?

I'm not sure why the Tets are spiking even more, except they basically hardly existed in the 60s and all varieties of tets were exploding after that.

I also seem to remember reading someone smart, here, noting the irony that hybridizers for decades were trying to reduce the size of daylilies, and then all of a sudden, bigger became popular and ever since bigger scapes and bigger blooms have been leading the charge. If I'm remembering that right, I wonder if that fits into these numbers. The big tet scapes can handle bigger blooms, and there are so many popular hybridizers that seem like they would reject anything less than 30 inches as too small.

Diploid registrations for Miniature and Small flower sizes by year.

Actual numbers of diploid registrations for miniature, small and all per year. Note the total registrations per year is the sum of all the diploid daylilies registered for that year that had flower sizes recorded in the registration information.

Actual numbers of tetraploid registrations for miniature, small and the total by year. Note the total registrations per year is the sum of all the tetraploid daylilies registered for that year that had flower sizes recorded in the registration information.

@Lyshack

I am certainly in agreement with the trend in that chart. It always seemed to me the short scapes let the flowers hide down in the foliage. That was one thing I disliked about so many of the older daylilies, the scapes were just too short for my liking. The 30-40 inch range seems to be my current preference.

For the diploids, below is the average registered scape height from 1967 to 2000.

Kind of funny on the Tet side. Both Judy Davisson and James Gossard started registering daylilies in the 2003-2005 range, and within 4 years the average height broke 30 inches. Coincidence?

Now that I think about it, it might have been Judy that noted the trend was to make smaller daylilies through hybridizing in the earlier days, he said trying to give credit where it's due.

Lyshack said:Kind of funny on the Tet side. Both Judy Davisson and James Gossard started registering daylilies in the 2003-2005 range, and within 4 years the average height broke 30 inches. Coincidence?

That can be checked

A look at the actual numbers of registrations for two recent time periods.


The changes in the numbers of diploid and tetraploid miniature and small flowered registrations seem trivial. That is, when we ignore the changes in the overall total numbers of registrations.

For the diploids the total number of registrations did not change much. However, the number of large flowered registrations decreased while the number of extra-large flowered registrations increased almost doubling.

For the tetraploids the total number of registrations more than doubled. The number of large flowered registrations almost doubled while the number of extra-large flowered registrations increased almost four times. Based on the total number of registrations from 1990 to 2005 the miniature flowered from 2006 to 2021 are only about one quarter the number we would expect (116) and the small flowered are only about one half the number we would expect (1870).

admmad said:

That can be checked

Why would anyone do anything like that?






edited to note an error. Gossard's height average in 2005 was actually 37.0, not 42.5. <--- Nice catch, Maurice

Tim had an interesting idea - that one or a few hybridizers might influence trends in daylily registrations.
The figure below looks at the trend in scape height for tetraploids and shows the average scape height for Gossard's registrations for a handful of years.



The figure shows the trend for scape height over the years beginning with 1997 and the average scape heights of Gossard's registrations for a few of those years.
Gossard first registered daylilies in 2000. Since the trend to taller scapes started on or before 1997 it is unlikely that he would have been one of the trend "setters". However, we can look at the effect that his registrations might have on the average scape heights over time. From the apparent straightness of the trend line for average scape height over time in comparison to the average scape heights for Gossard's registrations it does not look like there is a large effect (the line does not curve up).

There were 1836 tetraploid daylilies registered in 2006. Gossard (hybridizer last name) registered 45. I took a reasonable random sample of 110 of the registered tetraploids. There were three registered by Gossard. The average scape height of the sample without the Gossard registrations was 29" and with the registrations it was 29 and 1/4". Since the estimated increase in the scape height is about 1/4" per year (from the trend), I would think that is a significant effect.

Nice work, Maurice. Jaime Gossard was so prolific many of those years, but still a low percentage of the total. Thanks for the analysis on that. I might be the only one, but I thought it was interesting.

My computer databases of daylily registrations are only complete to 2000. For analyses that involve more recent years I have to sample the online registrations manually. If I can get a computerized copy of the registration database that is current there are other analyses that could be potentially interesting.