It's a very cold winter day here in the Flint Hills and while I was searching my phone for inspiration, I kept stopping at the bright, the cheery, the flashy photos. Many of these were photographs of last summer's daylilies, still beaming the sunshine of July into the freezing aura of January.
I had saved the picture above of 'Southern Wind', a 2003 introduction by Stamile, for just such a blog-worthy occasion, however in true keeping with my poor-recording nature I had mislabeled it as 'Summer Wind, which it obviously is not. Mislabeled or not, it certainly catches the eye doesn't it. Every new daylilean thing that one could desire is there; the crinkly edging in yellow, ribbed lavender of the thick main petals so resistant to drought, the clearly marked throat. My 'Southern Wind' is placed in back of the house with a direct southern view, exposed to all the burning sun and southern winds it could ever desire.
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| 'Heavenly Flight of Angels' |
'Southern Wind' and the rest of my newer daylilies pictured here are not your father's daylilies, as the saying goes. I'm too parsimonious to pay for all the newest and brightest, but even the divided clumps of daylilies sold each fall as a money-maker for the Flint Hills Daylily Society suffice to show how much the field of daylily breeding has changed the "ditch lilies" into queens of the garden. I do supplement my cheap daylily bargains with the occasional commercial purchase as well. I couldn't, for instance, resist the aptly named 'Heavenly Flight of Angels' displayed on the left.
I described purchasing it and dividing it last year. A newer spider, the bright yellow is softened to perfection by the cream edges.
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| 'Sonic Analogue' |
I won't try to name the rest of these daylilies on this page. After some process of elimination and searching records, I could, and I've labeled a few that I'm reasonably sure of, but it would take too long today to label the rest. I'll just leave you here with these beautiful but long-fallen daylilies, in hopes they brighten your day as much as they did mine today.
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| 'Julianna Lynn' |
It's a very cold winter day here in the Flint Hills and while I was searching my phone for inspiration, I kept stopping at the bright, the cheery, the flashy photos. Many of these were photographs of last summer's daylilies, still beaming the sunshine of July into the freezing aura of January.
In younger days, I sniffed at daylilies as municipal plants, probably a knee-jerk to the ubiquity of "Stella d'Oro." After 20 years in Kansas, I'm converted. They're great plants for our extreme climate, tough and beautiful year-round. "South Seas," "Prairie Blue Eyes" and "Hyperion" are champions here.
ReplyDeleteBest of luck in 2020, Prof.
Yes, absolutely...Kansas converts any gardener to daylilies, given enough time. Thankfully, the breeding has gone far beyond "Stella"!
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