Background history:

'Sailing at Dawn' is a semi-evergreen tetraploid introduced in 2005 by Petit.

This plant can be found in our Plant Database at:
Daylily (Hemerocallis 'Sailing at Dawn') .

Please join in, if you own this plant! We would love to know more! I award an acorn for performance information posted to this thread.



Also, please consider adding a Plant Performance Report to the database! Thank you!

Daylily (Hemerocallis 'Sailing at Dawn')

It's a nice flower, but growth here was anemic. After a few years with short scapes and slow growth, time to leave. Granted, temperature fluctuations here can be brutal. Didn't seem like 6 inches here. Scapes maybe 22 inches at most. I think I grew it for four years.

I saw a note that this plant does not come true from seed.
Does that mean that the only way to propagate is to buy a bare root plant? (I have never had any success growing from a bare root plant.) or to find someone who has it and can divide?
Or does this mean that plant does not come true from seeds collected by the gardener, but will come true from purchased seed?

What time of plant should it be planted?

thank you.

@ellen22
Not sure if you are asking about this particular daylily "Sailing at Dawn', but as a general rule daylilies do not come true from seed. That is not a bad thing but a very exciting thing, it means daylilies are sort of like people: the kids look different from the parents most of the time, sometimes very much different and some times very similar. It makes hybridizing very interesting and enjoyable when trying to create improved plants.
This really should be in a new thread, but being you are new here lets overlook that for now. It might get moved by the moderator but for now I want to answer your question. Yes a division will give you an identical plant, seed will not. Many daylilies grow small plants on the scapes called proliferations. If those are allowed to grow and form roots, then they can be removed and they will also provide an identical plant(seems there is some discussion on whether they will be totally identical) but most people accept that they are normally close enough the difference will not be noticeable.
I have seen seed advertised for sale as if the seed would produce duplicates of the pod parent plants, but I think only a few species daylilies will actually produce duplicates from seed, and those are not the plants people are wanting to grow.

I think only species daylilies come true from seed. There aren't so many of those, but there are thousands of cultivars in the marketplace which are hybrid plants. While a seed from them may end up being very similar, they may not look anything at all like the plant that produced the seed. The chances are really high that there will be significant differences and genetically they are pretty certain to be different. It wouldn't matter if it was collected or purchased, it would not come true.

Planting a bare root daylily isn't difficult and there are lots of expert growers here who will help you through the steps they find successful for doing that. Daylilies are among the easiest plants to establish from a bare root. I've managed successfully even in the hot, dry summers that are common in my part of Texas. I would think conditions in the Garden State would be ideal for it.

LOL! Cross posted with Larry. Welcome to NGA! Lot of help, encouragement and advice on this site. You just have to ask .

I do have 'Sailing At Dawn' in my garden. It was new last year and it did not bloom the first year in my garden. I purchased it from Dan's Designer Daylilies, and the only thing I can say right now is it did survive and return. I am looking forward to seeing it bloom this year. Hoping it will actually perform well and live up to its stats here in my garden.
Here is what it looks like now, three fans now it was two fans when planted.

It has bloomed well here, nice flowers, but I'm not sure it has increased at all since I have had it, I think this will be its 4th bloom year.

Thanks for the info!