Sorry if I gave any offense - I certainly didn't mean to.

I certainly don't think hybridizers (for the most part) are sinister (though in the past there has been a least one who played color games with his images ).

I agree that daylilies have to have some minimum amount of water to survive, let alone bloom well, propagate, and produce seed. It really irks me to see the general garden catalogs tout them as being "drought tolerant". They aren't. (If you need "drought tolerant", then grow irises - although they need water, too.)

But watering 45 min a day is not going to happen here. (If you can do so, then good for you. If you have to, my sympathy.)

As have others, I have learned that the rules in one garden, do not necessarily apply here. And while water is important, it is not the only factor affecting performance. Even back when I was watering much more liberally than I do these days, I learned several things: Bud counts are lower than what the southern hybridizers get (zone 9 in northern CA is not the same as zone 9 in FL), rebloom is less, colors are less saturated, blooms may have opening issues, and many polys do so less here. It is what it is.

So the things that stay in my garden are those that can live under my conditions, have blooms that open well with our cold nights, aren't total rust buckets (because I refuse to put up with that), and perform well enough. If they rebloom, great, and I have more than a few that do (including at least one "northern continuous rebloomer" 'Let Me Be Clear', which has given me at least 3 sets of scapes in part shade). But I also have more than a few that I keep, despite a lack of rebloom, because I love them and they do "well enough". ('Osterized' and 'Sears Tower' are two in this latter camp; 'Sears Tower' is currently the July star of the garden.)

Sorry for the thread drift (but note my comment in the paragraph above about 'Let Me Be Clear'; 'Twist Again', also by Mike Huben, is another rebloomer, but I can't recall if it has had 3 sets of scapes for me or not - and again, this is in part shade).

While I'm still confused as to the proper term, think I'll just stick with recurrent bloom. This is the second set of scapes just starting to bloom, first ones been blooming since 6/6. No break in the action.There are also three smaller scapes, you can see one in the bottom center, just starting up. This is Huben's Helicopter in it's second summer. It's the smallest one, because our puppy dug it up and left it on the porch in Dec. I replanted it, but it's still half the size of the others. I do make sure that the garden gets an inch of water a week, and fling alfalfa pellets (five gallon bucket) about bi-weekly. But I don't think that is excessive pampering. I believe it's all about our early summer weather. Anyhow, even if there is no definitive term for what it's doing, I still highly approve. Thanks for the tip, Poly, on Let Me Be Clear! And I sure would like to know who the photo-shopping hybridizer was??

I really don't look for stats, apart from the fact that here daylilies are not so common and the few who sell them don't speak about statitics, I was looking for easy flowering plants, to let in the garden all year round without worries, and daylilies meet these needs. They are not so perfect, I am learning year after year they can have problems too, but they live. I only water every other day when it doesn't rain, 10 minutes, because I get bored fast. If some of them wants to give me a rebloom, instant or not, it's a nice surprise. I can see the ones in clay soil don't increase much, others in different soil grow faster and better, but that's what my garden is. I love to have them, to look at the flowers, but it doesn't have to become a slavery. We all do what we can, daylilies too. I had two that died and one is not so good, but since I don't have another spot to transplant it will face its destiny. I think we are all clever enough to guess that a professional grower gives plants attention we don't.

I hate that "drought tolerate" label placed on daylilies, too. Sure, the plant may be able to "get by" with sparse rain in extreme heat, but other problems set in like rot, summer dormancy, etc. People who are looking for NO care should look for something simpler....like landscape rocks!

There are three terms that can apply to daylilies: reblooming, recurrent, and remontant. They all mean the same thing....having more than one cycle of flowering per year. (Here comes the older than dirt part again, Julie) At one time (back in the old days), the registration form included a section where hybridizers had to choose either "rebloom" or "recurrent" to indicate if there is a rest period between bloom cycles (or not). Because even hybridizers did not know know what the term "recurrent" meant and both terms could be abbreviated "Re" when published, the AHS decided it was far more practical to change the registration form. Now we are given a two check box choice. The form says REBLOOM with two choices YES or NO and you simply pick one. So you can find both types of reblooming daylilies, with a simple search by characteristic by searching for "rebloom"....it is now lumped together and whether there is a rest period between bloom cycles is not indicated. You would need to ask the hybridizer.

When registering a daylily there is no way to indicate a reblooming habit...such as saying a plant will rebloom, but not every year or that not every fan present in the clump will rebloom as some might not. Hybridizers see variation, too. A plant may rebloom like crazy when there is plenty of rain and not at all the next year when there is drought. We may see rebloom on just one fan in the clump or all of them. So when you see registration data that says a plant reblooms, that should not be taken as a guarantee that it will rebloom in your garden, but rather that the plant is CAPABLE of reblooming because the hybridizer has observed that in their garden.

Tina, the Photoshopping hybridizer was a long time ago and is not (to my knowledge) currently an active hybridizer, and I believe his intros have more or less faded into obscurity. I forgot his name, but at the time some of his intro images had rather more blue in them than was really the case. The images were, um, pretty fantastic.

Well spoken on the reblooming, Judy. Not every year, not every fan, maybe not every garden.

I remember that hybridizer well. He was in the Durham NC area and his last name was Elliott, I cant remember for sure but first name may have been Robert?? His prose descriptions of his cultivars was, shall we say, interesting? The funniest (true) story I ever heard was from a couple of extremely well known hybridizers (whose names will not be given) who'd been invited as guest speakers to the Regional meeting that year in Region 15 and his garden was on tour, The tour bus arrived early, and everyone was made to sit on the bus until the hosts could go around through the entire garden and remove all the huge golf umbrellas they'd placed above ALL of his introductions so the sun wouldn't hit them! Can't you just picture that?? This story was related to me at least 15 years ago and I've always thought of that when traveling in that area. A friend of mine actually bought some of his expensive intros and (newbie at the time) I remember being SHOCKED seeing how little they resembled the pictures. First lesson to learn in buying, caveat emptor.

Here is my five cents worth (I know it used to be two cents, but I am taking into account a bit of inflation). Over the past couple of years, I have been getting more and more rebloom. This year, I noticed that I have more plants sending up a second round of scapes even before the first ones start blooming. These are only occurring with the tetraploids. The diploids rarely rebloom or send up a second set of scapes before the first ones even start blooming in my garden. This year it has been relatively dry (until recently were we have had rain for 4 straight days - more on that in a minute), so I was surprised to see a second round of scapes appearing. I also think that it has to do with a plant getting established to perform like this. I have only watered the gardens twice and that was right before the scapes started to appear and once they started to bloom.

Now about the rain. It was still raining when I came home from work today, but lighter than it had been, so I took a quick walk around the gardens. I was astonished at the size and color of the blooms. I almost did not recognize them. They looked more like the hybridizers pictures than ever before. The colors were rich and deep. The blooms were about an inch or more bigger. GIZMO was twice its size. Watering is the key to get these cursed plants to really perform and show off. I can't even imagine the water bill for the hybridizers.

David

Julie, yes, that was the hybridizer. (I recognized the name.)

David, I live out in the arid West and we generally get no rain during the bloom season. This dry weather (no doubt there are other issues) does affect the look of the blooms. (I'll address size in a moment.)

I still remember a few years ago when we had a very unseasonable high humidity day (and even a little bit of rain that day) during the middle of bloom season. The daylily blooms on that day were like walking through a magical garden; they were almost luminous and glowing with color.

As for water versus size. We generally cannot water that much due to drought and watering restrictions. However, I recall back in the day when I was active in the "local" (not really) daylily club, and we held shows. One tip that we were told was to beef up the watering for a week before the show, watering every day, in order to get the blooms to their maximum size. That's something that I've never forgotten - that, plus that it takes a lot of water to pump open a bloom properly. So when I see a bloom that is smaller than the registered size, or not opening properly even if the nights are warm enough, then I know that more water is needed. (Part of the daylily garden is in the ground and irrigated with sprinklers, part is in pots and let's just say may not always get enough water. )

Kitty Patterson, Coach's Painted Rock, Golden Hibicus

I'm a daylily newbie. My only one is Big Time Happy. It bloomed very well in April, and May, and took a break. Now I noticed some new scapes growing and got all excited that I might get reblooms. For some reason the new blooms are opening way down in the leaves, maybe 3 inches out of the soil. What would cause that? It is in a container, and has been consistently watered.

Being you are a newbie to daylilies, I also assume the plant is a newbie. It is not unusual for new plants in my garden to have rebloom scapes shorter than the first ones. Not always, and sometimes the scapes are taller than the first series, but that is normally after the plants have gotten established. I do suppose it could also be cultivar related, but I suspect it is just because the plant is new. Being in a pot also could be a contributor, but I don't actually grow plants in pots, I do keep some in pots just to give away, but I don't really grow them, they just mostly grow on their own. So I can't really say if growing the plants in pots would cause the rebloom scapes to be shorter.

I grow some number of daylilies in pots, but with a few exceptions, those don't generally rebloom. (Two notable exceptions are Huben diploids, LET ME BE CLEAR and TWIST AGAIN. As I recall, their rebloom scapes seem to be about the same height as the original scapes. Come to think on it, ditto for the diploid COMING UP ROSES. )

Now as to whether or not you can get the registered height and bloom size in a container as in the ground... maybe, maybe not. I do know that when I grew SEARS TOWER in a pot, the scape height was shorter than it is now when it is in the ground. (But then, it wasn't in all that large a pot, so that could have had something to do with it.)

Judy and Julie - Thanks for explaining how recurrent and reblooming are different! I always thought they were synonymous.

Thanks, yes, my daylily is only a bit over a year old. I'm planning to plant it in the ground, and am betting it will do even better. Thanks for the info.