Part 1, Pages 1-23 - AHS Region 2

DOWN and LOVE GODDESS, and a ruffled pink polychrome
HAIL MARY was born.
Full form daylilies were in vogue. No one wanted a skinny petaled,
spider type flower. Steve either composted that type of seedling
or he pawned the undesirables off on a landscaper friend. After
all, he had worked the last thirty years to fatten up the petals, so why
keep the skinnies. A few years ago, daylily enthusiasts began to
notice how tall, thin-petaled daylilies added grace and movement to
a garden. Twenty years later, Steve was able to retrieve one of those
landscaper seedlings, and it has become one of the most popular
daylilies in his garden. Instead of naming this flower
LANDSCAPER’S DELIGHT, the lovely tetraploid lavender unusual
form is known as KYOTO SWAN.
The 1990 Years
In 1990 a smashing purple diploid, GRAND MASTERPIECE,
from Texas hybridizer Bob Dove took the daylily world by storm.
Its color was better than any tetraploid out there. Steve chuckled as
he described how, later, it was confirmed that Dove sort of rustled
the plant from another Texas hybridizer, Jack Carpenter, and put his
own brand on it. A neighboring hybridizer Curt Hanson, with whom
Steve exchanged daylily knowledge, managed to do a successful
conversion on GRAND MASTERPIECE, and he shared a couple
of pollen filled anthers with Steve. Always outcrossing to create
hardier plants, he used the pollen and was able to incorporate another
tough southern gene into his hybridizing program from a plant
that would thrive in a climate as hot as Hades but that would also
take the abuse of the frozen North. COURT MAGICIAN crossed
with tetraploid GRAND MASTERPIECE resulted in wide-petaled,
deep purple NINJA NIGHT. When he crossed STRUTTER’S BALL
melon colored cultivars of Brother Charles Reckamp. Results were
a purple bicolor, which added a new dimension to his purple line,
and he named it FLYING CARPET. Intrigued with eye patterns,
Steve combined the gene pool of Munson’s lavender watermark
EMPEROR BUTTERFLY with FLYING CARPET and came up
with a cultivar he dubbed OLD KING COLE. Steve considers this
one as one of the nicest eyed bicolor cultivars in his program.
By the mid 1990’s, Steve was becoming concerned about the future
of the daylily. Demand was at an all-time high for big, fat, ruffled,
bubbly, multi-edged daylilies, and connoisseurs would pay any price
to get them. Greed was taking over the integrity of growers and
hybridizers. Pretty diploids were being converted without first checking
for plant defects. Inbreeding ran rampant, flashy cultivars were
being mass produced by unnatural process and grown under greenhouse
conditions. Many plants were never kissed by the sun or
brushed by a breath of fresh air before being thrown onto the market.
The daylily world was getting upset because some of these plants
were so weak, they died before being planted in the ground. The
modern daylily was becoming an expensive annual.
On a visit to Moldovan’s Garden a few years ago, an outstanding
flower with a multiple eye pattern jumped out at me while I was
inspecting the seedling field. When I questioned Steve about the
seedling, he said, “I didn’t do it–Tony did.” Tony Slanec was a horticulture
student from The Ohio State University doing graduate
work at the garden and who wanted to learn how to hybridize. Steve
showed him the ropes and turned the young man loose. Tony crossed
one of Steve’s patterned, eyed OLD KING COLE seedlings with
Elizabeth Salter’s tetraploid LADY VIOLET EYES. The match resulted
in a uniquely distinctive seedling with a washed violet eye
pattern that showed every day, no matter what the temperature. This
Image: Roy Woodhall
FRIAR’S LANTERN
(STRUTTER’S BALL X TET GRAND MASTERPIECE)
OLD KING COLE (Image: Roy Woodhall)
with the potent pollen from MEPHISTOPHELES, a dark violet
purple materialized. NOBLE LORD was a result of taking
MEPHISTOPHELES pollen to FENCING MASTER. A grape colored
flower with a white edge named SHAKA ZULU came from
crossing MEPHISTOPHELES with COURT MAGICIAN. Outcrossing
the MEPHISTOPHELES seedlings to his older line produced
a white edge on dark purple WATERSHIP DOWN and the
frilly, white edged, deep purple VATICAN CITY.
Steve noticed a slight multiple eye pattern in a seedling from
STRUTTERS BALL and tetraploid GRAND MASTERPIECE, that
he named FRIAR’S LANTERN. The eye pattern did not show every
day, but when it did there was something different about the
flower. Starting to explore the possibilities of the eye pattern in
FRIAR’S LANTERN, he took its pollen to strong, multibranched,
Page 18 Spring-Summer 2004
DIGITAL
IMAGERY
(Image: Roy
Woodhall)
AHS Region 2/Great Lakes Newsletter