Losing Southern Grown Daylilies Over the Winter

I've been writing blog posts in my head, as I work, for months. 

Through Facebook I have become friendly with so many daylily enthusiasts, many who hybridize as I do. I know you're out there!  I hope that this blog serves as a launching point for discussions of all things daylily--and gardening and birding and hybridizing / breeding of any and all plants and animals. 

This morning I'd like to write about how I AM SICK OF LOSING SOUTHERN GROWN DAYLILIES OVER THE WINTER.

And yet. 

I still purchase southern-grown daylilies. Again and again. And I use them in my hybridizing. And then my seedling don't make it through the winter. And hence we must ask, What is wrong with me?

Partly the problem is that *sometimes* a southern grown daylily will do well here. I remember learning in Psychology 101--a class I took some thirty odd years ago--but still, that in terms of Pavlovian training, intermittent rewards make a rat more addicted to a behavior than constant rewards. So, the fact that sometimes a daylily from the south does great here in Massachusetts has trained me to keep buying them. That must be it. :)

It's easy to identify a dormant based on its spring time condition. It has shed its leaves completely over the winter, and those leaves are dead, dry and crumpled at the base of the plant come spring, easily swept away. Evergreens, on the other hand, are a tangled mass of moist, decaying leaves from which new growth attempts to grow. You can't just swipe away last summer's growth because it's actually still very much a part of the plant. It's no wonder evergreens generally don't do as well here, then, as they just don't give up, attempting to stay alive above ground all winter long. Dormants rest. Evergreens keep working--even though the energy they need from the sun to keep chugging along isn't available to them as it is in the south. 

But those southern beauties are just so ... beautiful! I can't resist bringing them north to their peril.

I've introduced sixteen daylilies over the last three years. Naturally I love all of them, but I must admit that it's been so much easier for me to keep the dormants I've introduced in stock, as opposed to the evergreens. My dormants bounce back after division and happily and sturdily create new fans for me to sell each spring, but my evergreens reproduce so much more slowly and suffer every time I divide them.  Hence, my dormants are out in the world at this point, in others' gardens, but my evergreens are rarely for sale at all, and when they are sold I worry they will not do well in any garden north of my own. 

The moral of the story is....

I've been hybridizing for six years now, and I'm just now beginning to understand my own criteria for a plant I want to introduce. It can't just survive the winter. It has to like the winter, and it has to multiply in a way that allows me to continually sell it or gift it to others. This eliminates 90% of my seedlings from contention. And this breaks my little heart. It really does.

It especially breaks my heart because it means I need to stop using tender, southern beauties in my hybridizing, or at the very the least only one parent can be of that type. 

Here are a few seedlings that bloomed last summer for me that either didn't make it through the winter or barely made it. 

 Luanne Tarro x Holy Lamb

 unknown x Little Red Genie

Cherry Ripples x Chaos Choeography

 Crystal Rubies x The Ultimate Sacrifice

Are you sad for me? I am sad for me. I'm also a bit sad for these beautiful plants, who had they been created in say, Florida, they might be on the road to introduction! But instead they graced me with their ephemeral beauty, and then succumbed to the evils of wintry night. Tragedy.

Thanks for reading my drivel. 

For those interested in all things daylily and hybridizing, I'm going to attempt to write most days going forth. :) 

If you are a daylily person and feel moved to comment, please do! This blog is going to be my way of reaching out to you to share our common obsession.