Astraea
Name: Astraea
Seedling Number: EOSPR27
Bloom Diameter: 6”
Scape Height: 57”
Branches: 4
Bud Count: 18
Bloom Season: EM
Rebloom: Reblooms, but not listed on the AHS registry as a rebloomer, because I forgot to add that when I did the registration.
Color/Description: Medium pink, darker pink band, white midrib, green to yellow throat.
Ploidy: Tet
Bloom Habit: Diurnal
Foliage: Dorm
Pod Parent: Eos At Dawn
Pollen Parent: Pacific Rainbow
Year Bred: 2013
Rust Resistance: A+/3 Years
Fertile: Both Way
Astraea is a milestone in my program, being the one of the first seedlings introduced from one of my own seedling/introductions. Astraea shows the plant traits I have been after with the hybrid pink flower phenotype, and all on a giant plant with tall, strong scapes. Chef's kiss, indeed!
Astraea was one of the first seedlings I flowered that had one of my own selected F1 species-like outcross introductions as one parent. I was both excited and anxious to see if I would get away from the wild type colors at this generation and retain plant size and quality. I remember the first day I went out into the garden and found the first flower on Astraea. I was very happy to see the pink color. The scape was tall from the first year of flowering. The foliage is a nice, deep green, shows good tolerance to late freezes and the flower shows moderate thrips resistance. For such a large plant, Astraea transplants well and tolerates division, recovering quickly. There is good resistance to late spring freezes and I have seen rebloom since the first year of flowering.
The rust resistance rating was A+ for three years in a row. Astraea is fertile both ways, though the plant must be established and happy to set pods (some years I see pods, some years I don't). I have a good number of seedlings coming along from Astraea, though, so there is definitely seed set. Just be sure to give it some time. I am noting that many of the giant types of daylilies take a solid three years to reach mature size, and in many of these that I am working with, the plant then continues to get bigger and makes a massive clump as they mature past the third year.
The seedlings I have seen are predominantly in the pink and lavender range, though I have been crossing in that direction. Pattern eye genetics seem to be carried from the Mystical Rainbow ancestry through pollen parent Pacific Rainbow. I only saw breeding results from Astraea during the last year of my rust resistance screening program, but the seedlings that went through the last year showed above average resistance. Many are quite large plants, as we might expect from the ancestral genes coming down from Notify Ground Crew and Implausibility through pod parent Eos At Dawn.
Astraea in Greek myth was the daughter of Eos, so there was really no other choice for the name. Astraea and Eos were titans in Greek myth. This family line is proving to produce titans, as well.
Below you will find multiple pictures of Astraea from 2017 through 2021, first in the seedling bed and then in the hybridizing garden and the line out garden. There are 16 images of Astraea followed by two images of one of my favorite seedlings from Astraea (Dragonfly Dawn x Astraea). The final three images include a slide of Astraea as a seedling (Eos At Dawn x Pacific Rainbow), a slide of Astraea's pod parent, Eos At Dawn when it was simply known as (Notify Ground Crew x Implausibility), and the final image is Eos At Dawn in Bill Hurt's garden in spring 2021. Click on any image below to see a large image and easily look through all the images in a photo gallery. Scroll on down for comments on some of these photos.
