Friday, July 18, 2008

Daylilies - Miniatures

Miniature daylilies are cute, no doubt about it. I'm nor sure when the first of them was registered, but this first one, 'Butterpat' is 30 or 40 years old. Most of the early ones were yellow, as were the early full-sized daylilies. We have a number of registered tiny yellow ones and a whole walk edged with yellow seedlings. These miniatures have mostly low foliage that is narrower that their larger friends, mostly quite in scale. I have a few seedlings with tall scapes and miniature flowers, kind of remind me of butterflies just floating.

This next one is 'Siloam Tee Tiny'. Gold (kind of orange to me, but it is called gold) is probably the second most common color. My favorite of the miniatures are those that are only about an inch and a half across, though technically anything under 3 inches can be registered as a miniature.
This next one is 'Siloam Doodlebug'. All of the Siloam daylilies were registered by Pauline Henry and there are hundreds of them. I think Ms Henry must have really enjoyed hybridizing. She didn't keep records of her crosses (at least none we know of ) but sure made some pretty flowers. Sometimes I think all that record keeping takes away from enjoying the garden. I like just wandering around the garden making crosses as I see something I think might be nice. If I had to stop to write out tags and write things in a notebook, it would take some of the fun out of it. A pretty flower is a pretty flower no matter its lineage, though I have lost sales because I couldn't give a detailed genealogy of a bloom.


This is 'Fairy Firecracker'. It's hard to tell in this picture because of the raindrops, but it has a bit of a stippled pattern.


'Two to Tango' is registered as a double, but doubles bred in the south are sometimes reluctant to double up north, though they are lovely flowers just the same. This bloom at least made an attempt !





'Button Bee' is an example of a tiny bloom with an eye. Actually the tiny ones can have any trait of the larger ones, though I don't offhand know of any that are considered unusual form.




'Blooddrop' was one of the earliest clumps blooming in the garden this year (I have it in 3 different places). It is still blooming. I do like daylilies that bloom over a long period. Stella D'Oro is just a plain yellow, but sells more than any other daylily I know of just for that reason.






'Siloam Tiny Tim' is a love lavender with a banded eye. Cute.






This is one of my new ones 'Boogie Woogie Blues' which has a wonderfully patterned eye. This is a color combination I like a lot and have many other daylilies with similar colors




Apologies for not being here the last 2 days. On Wednesday Blogger wouldn't let me put any pictures up - just gave me those horrible red x s in a box. Yesterday I left the house at 7 am, so not enough time to get much of anything done in my daily computer time. Off now at 7:30 to weed and mulch before the temperature hits 90 again.
Jane







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