Friday, June 19, 2015

Store Labels are Not Necessarily Correct. Daylilies. 6.19.15

Daylily Label #1.  "Playground"

Daylily #!.  6.19.15

Daylily Label "Frans Haus" with Blossom.  6.19.15

New Daylily Plant "Fooled Me" 6.19.15
 This is a case of "What you don't see is not necessarily what you get".   The label was, I think, for a package of daylily roots that I bought earlier this year at Lowes.  The roots looked dried out and almost dead.  I planted then in container for extra TLC.  I was surprised that they bloomed the first year.  However - the flower is pale yellow.  Kind of a nice flower, but clearly not what I thought I was buying.

The second was one I bought this year, in bud but not blooming.  This was from Fred Meyer.  It seems like there is a pattern here - the flower shape is similar to the photo, but the colors are not even close.

An argument can be made that the first year flower may not represent the plant, and the second year it might.  I've seen that happen with bearded irises.

Daylilies are nice flowers, almost maintenance free, and tolerate a wide variety of conditions.  I have every daylily I have bought.  They just grow stronger and more vigorous with time.  They make a nice border, among Spring bulbs that have long since finished blooming and foliage died down.

Not learning from previous experience, I bought two more at Lowes.  Some were in bloom, but I wasn't thinking about buyer beware when I bought these, and picked out two that are almost blooming - for longer bloom time.

I'll be interested to see if "Fooled Me", fooled me.  And to see if "Daring Deception" is a not so daring deception. 
New Daylily Plant "Daring Deception"  6.19.15

10 comments:

  1. The mislabel is not intentional. Most of the time it's just genetically weak newly hybrid that revert back to the dominate gene in the case of your daylily because the fancier the pattern on the flower the harder for it to "keep" yr after yr. Most of time it happens to dahlias. There is a trial period for new dahlia to intro into the system of 3-5 yrs if the flower revert it won't be allow to be named. But the market is still flooded with unstable genes. I see patterns changed back and forth. Some never bloom the same way it was as in the first yr. If the size of the flower is mini and you got a giant then the label is entirely wrong. But I find that most of the time the store bough some cheap "blown out" whole sale lot from some farm that won't ruin their good name for putting inferior product out there. I usually stick with the tried and true names but the new fancy ones is very enticing. I will take a chance any day and usually is an impulse buy. That's why people like me loves heirloom which stay true under the test of time.
    Your black calla reminds me that I used to have one in the secret garden at work in the parking lot but the bulldozer took it. Its one of those thing that I forgot to rescue when it was dormant. Your squash seems to grow over night. Summer is here, eating lots of squash everyday. Soon I'll be sick of it and then will toss it to friends. First Patty pans today and yellow crook neck harvested.

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  2. Lance, thanks for the explanation. That helps a lot. I think it's a really nice flower, and I will keep it. It just isn't the one I thought I was getting :-) The fancy ones are really cool... I know what you mean about impulse buy.

    The squashes are growing like gangbusters. I'm amazed!

    Envious of you that you got some already. But I will soon, too.

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  3. Bicolor flowers are easy cross. The yellow in your yellow and orange lily was reverted back to orange because orange is the dominate color. The fancier the flower the harder to keep the pattern. Usually the darker color will take over the light. Same with people a blue eye person married to a brown eye person the offspring will only have brown eyes not blue eyes. Maybe a green eye offspring later down the line but usually not right away. Many crosses later maybe a better chance for green/blue eyes.

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  4. Lance, that makes a lot of sense. I am always learning new things. It seems like sometimes plants need to adapt or mature in their new situation. Like fruit trees, sometimes the first year fruit is not nearly as good as later years. Maybe some flowers are the same way? Well, it's fun learning what they will do. I don't really mind the incorrect colors, except most seem to be Stella D'Oro which is around everywhere and gets tiresome to look at. At least the lavender one is different.

    My dad had grey eyes, my mom had brown. I came out hazel. Which is kind of like the bicolor daylilies.

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    1. You are correct, Daniel. There are different species of flowers and trees that take time to mature before their blooms and/or fruit isn't very good the first year or two. Daylilies can be that way in terms of their blooms and some lilies do not propagate "true" when grown from seeds. Most Bare-root daylilies purchased from the store seem to be root ball divisions from mature plants that are then packaged and shipped to stores where they are sold. I've been told by Cultivators (hobby growers and by Daylily/plant nursery owners) that it can take 2 - 3 years before the color/pattern on a daylily "settles" or becomes it's "True color".

      Once mature, the color/pattern of the Daylily will stay the same year after year. The bareroot lilies that I purchased were suppose to be 'El Desperado' have now been growing in the same containers for the past 3 years. They've received plenty of water and fertilizer to make sure they are getting the nutrients they need to grow and produce healthy and produce beautiful blooms. Unfortunately, the Daylily color and pattern I was hoping to see in my garden is no where to be found, and in it's place the Daylily growing in it's place is a solid light lemony yellow color. In fact, as I stated in my post they appear to be the exact same Daylily as you have posted a picture of in your post (Second picture from the top).

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    2. RebelCowgirl, thanks for the info. I have a feeling that a lot of the big box store packaged daylilies will not be as labeled. I've had the same issue with other flowers, such as tulips, hyacinths, and daffodils.


      We'll see how the mail order ones come out. I think the source was very reliable and reputable (Oakes). The plants were much, much bigger than the store bought. I have not seen them bloom yet, so Im withholding judgement. The cost was higher, especially when including shipping. But if that's what it takes to get quality, at least we know.

      That yellow one is about to bloom now, lots and lots of buds. We'll see if it's like the label or like last year. Ditto for the supposed "Frans Hals". The plants themselves are very vigorous and sturdy.

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  5. I had the same thing happen to be twice now when I purchased bare-root Daylilies from Walmart. In both instances, the dayliles were suppose to be 'El Desperado' and instead I've ended up with a daylily that looks exactly the same in color and bloom shape as the Daylily you posted a picture of at the top of your post. This picture - http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ge5trMwcMJ8/VYTNhOX8MGI/AAAAAAAANcc/uuGOV1DRhB4/s1600/1%2Byellow%2Bdaylily.jpg

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  6. The fact that it happened twice to you and at least 3 times to me makes be think this is how it is. There is also the issue of tissue culture, which is used for propagating a lot of commercially sold daylilies. I've read other websites that state they are not genetically stable in tissue culture, and you can lose genes for things like color patterns.

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  7. I don't dispute the genetics-based explanations but, as someone whose job is to research plants for information to be placed on pot tags, I am here to tell you that consistent and correct information is hard to come by. Yesterday I emailed a nursery to mention that their online photo of Helleborus 'Pippa's Purple' depicted a yellow flower, and that they had misspelled "Lenten". In m any cases, ask 10 different nurseries for size, hardiness, or even colors of a given plant, you'll get 10 different answers. Recently I contacted a major national supplier of seeds and plants to ask why a plant for which they included a species epithet was described as an interspecific hybrid. They replied that it "looked like" the species, so they used that name, even though it was interspecific. It's a jungle out there.

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    1. I agree with you that a lot of nursery labels should be taken with a grain of salt. So should nursery catalog descriptions. I have been burned more times than I can describe. An example, the state-sanctioned Buddleia intergeneric hybrid, "Blueberry Cobbler", described as 4-6 feet tall, grew at least 18 feet in my yard, more like a tree than a bush. Ditto for "Peach Cobbler". Even cutting back to coppice the things, they grow back to tree size in one season. Maybe that's just a local climate issue, and they don't grow that big everywhere else. Even so, they are ugly. The dried flower clusters persist for many months.

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