Friday, January 26, 2024

New 2024 Daylily Introductions

New 2024 Daylily Introductions


2024 introductions

My new 2024 Daylily Introductions are now released and available to be ordered for spring 2024 shipping. Click on the link in the previous sentence to see them all. Click on any image to go to the full description page for that cultivar.

To check availability go to my Availability and Pricing page.

I have updated my website, Sun Dragon Daylilies, adding multiple new pages to make navigation easier, which allows you to more easily find the right daylily cultivar from my introductions for your garden or breeding program.

One of the new pages features all My Introductions by year.

One of the new pages features all my introductions broken up into Categories.

Those categories include Flower Color, Foliage Type, Rust Resistance, Height, Ploidy Level, and Flower Season.

Another new page is the Price List Quick List, which lists all my introductions in an abbreviated list that shows the name of the cultivar listed by year of introduction, whether it is currently available for 2024, and if so, the price. This will allow you to check availability and pricing at a glance.

The final new page is of Customer Images and shows pictures of my introductions growing in my customer's gardens. Please feel free to submit your images of my cultivars growing in your garden for potential inclusion on this page in the future.

I am really proud of these new introductions and I hope you find the new pages useful. Below are images of each of the 2024 introductions. Click the image to go to the description page.

Aladdin Sane
Aladdin Sane

Baalbek
Baalbek

Butterscotch Queen
Butterscotch Queen

Cheddar Gorgeous
Cheddar Gorgeous

Elizabethan Courtly Love
Elizabethan Courtly Love

Elizabethan Sharp Wit
Elizabethan Sharp Wit

Eternal Mist
Eternal Mist

Glacial Substance
Glacial Substance

Glow Of The Heart
Glow Of The Heart

Implausible Titan
Implausible Titan

Solar Disk
Solar Disk

Stellar Princess
Stellar Princess

Substance Of Sunlight
Substance Of Sunlight

Tomato Kimchi
Tomato Kimchi

Volron Empire
Volron Empire

Wednesday, January 10, 2024

Solar Disk


Solar Disk


Cultivar Name: Solar Disk

Seedling Number: TSMSDD 14


Bloom Diameter: 6”


Scape Height: 40”


Branches: 5


Bud Count: 27


Bloom Season: MID


Rebloom: Yes


Color/Description: Bright medium yellow with slightly golden tones in the throat.


Ploidy: TET


Bloom Habit: ext


Foliage: Dorm


Fragrance: Yes


Pod Parent: Tetra Siloam Medallion


Pollen Parent: Stardust Dragon


Year Bred: 2014


Rust Resistance: A+/2 years


Fertile: Fertile both ways


For a complete list of my available daylilies and pricing, click here.


Comments: Solar Disk was a special project for me - combining the gorgeous flat flower genetics coming from the tetraploid conversion of Siloam Medallion with high rust resistance and a scape with better branching. The tetraploid conversion of Siloam Medallion that I used in breeding was a gift from Jim Spencer and is quite pod fertile, especially for a tetraploid. I used it in the last years of my rust resistance screening to combine those primal genes from tet. Siloam Medallion (TSM hereafter) with resistant lines with better branching, among other traits. This cross of TSM as pod parent with Stardust Dragon as pollen parent gave several excellent seedlings with very high rust resistance and nice branching. The one that would go on to be Solar Disk showed the best branching and bud count, along with good fertility and a robust and eye-catching flower display, as well as the open flower form. The plant went through the last two years of my rust screening program, showing very high resistance both years. 


The flower season is mid extending into late with the instant rebloom. The branching ranges from four up to five on a mature clump. The flower is big and splashy, open and often showing a narrow-closured, spatulate looking flower (as you can see in some of the images below). The flower also shows excellent substance with thick petals that hold up well. An excellent breeder, I have seen some very flat seedlings and also seedling flowers that are based on melon (which Solar Disk carries, coming from Stardust Dragon). Excellent for modernizing the form of tetraploid lines in rust resistance breeding programs.



Solar Disk
Summer 2020, seedling bed. 
Very spatulate flower form on this day.

Solar Disk
Summer 2020, seedling bed.

Solar Disk
Summer 2018, seedling bed.

Solar Disk
Summer 2023, line out garden.

Solar Disk
Summer 2020, seedling bed.




Implausible Titan


Implausible Titan


Cultivar Name: Implausible Titan

Seedling Number: WTTIMP 3


Bloom Diameter: 6”


Scape Height: 44”


Branches: 4


Bud Count: 15


Bloom Season: Mid


Rebloom: No


Color/Description: Bright fire red flower with lighter midribs and a slightly darker band above glowing gold throat.


Ploidy: TET


Bloom Habit: Diurnal


Foliage: Dorm


Fragrance: UNK


Pod Parent: Welding The Titanic


Pollen Parent: Implausibility


Year Bred: 2012


Rust Resistance: A+/4 years


Fertile: Very fertile both ways


For a complete list of my available daylilies and pricing, click here.


Comments: Implausible Titan is a perfect blend of the two parents. It has exceptionally pretty red coloring, often showing a white edge. The scapes are tall and have nice branching. The flowers are consistently lovely and the plant is robust and vigorous. The rust resistance and breeding value for rust resistance is exceptional, and thrips resistance is moderate. As a parent, Implausible Titan produces robust seedlings, many with very high rust resistance and high fertility. Implausible Titan is extremely fertile both ways and is both an excellent garden plant and an excellent breeder for rust resistance, bright red color and robust plants with tall scapes. The plant is very cold hardy. It forms clumps and has shown no running habit here in my gardens for over a decade. It has good increase and makes a gorgeous display on a mature clump. I have several seedlings from it that I am still working with and can recommend it as a breeder or a garden plant. I am not sure how far south it can survive, but it should thrive in the far north. Even if it doesn't thrive in the south, it would be a good plant to use some pollen from, even if only for one season, to get its rust resistance into southern line.


Implausible Titan
2015 seedling bed

Implausible Titan
2017 seedling bed

Implausible Titan
2017 seedling bed

Implausible Titan
2018 seedling bed

Implausible Titan
2023 line out garden





Glow Of The Heart


Glow Of The Heart


Cultivar Name: Glow Of The Heart

Seedling Number: SMWT 7


Bloom Diameter: 6”


Scape Height: 28”


Branches: 5


Bud Count: 24


Bloom Season: MID-LATE


Rebloom: Yes


Color/Description: Peach petals with big raspberry to purple eye radiating into throat with raspberry petal edges above intense, wide green throat.


Ploidy: TET


Bloom Habit: ext


Foliage: SEV


Fragrance: UNK


Pod Parent: Stare Master


Pollen Parent: Whale Tails


Year Bred: 2013


Rust Resistance: A+/3 years


Fertile: Pollen is fertile, while pods have been almost impossible to set.


For a complete list of my available daylilies and pricing, click here.


Comments: Glow Of The Heart shows that delightful green heart consistently, and maintains it throughout the day. It starts the day with the throat deep green and ends with it bright green.  You can see the late evening images below. The green throat is not an artifact of the camera or the lighting. It is strong and consistent and is one of the best green throats I have produced. It has been a consistent favorite of mine now for years. It is eleven years old this year, and first flowered eight years ago in 2016. It went through the final three years of my rust resistance screening program with very high resistance and the thrips resistance is moderate.  The pollen is very strong and I have produced some excellent seedlings, some with very green throats too, but I have only gotten a few pods throughout all those years. While the scapes are short (at least for my taste), the branching is phenomenal, showing those antler-like branches that hold the flowers well-apart. When bred to taller partners, I have gotten taller scaped plants with these antler branches, some with deep green throats.


The foliage is semi-evergreen in warm-winter gardens, but goes dormant in very cold winters here, while it remains above ground and green in warm winters in my garden. The rebloom is very consistent, often reblooming two or three times in a season. It has rebloomed for me every year since it first flowered in 2016. The flowers always draw me in, and the big green heart, late in the evening garden of the late season, is magnetic. The rebloom is a big plus, producing these striking flowers at a time when little else is flowering. Even in late summer/early fall, when the nights are already getting cool, Glow Of The Heart still shows the green throat, though a bit less intense than in the peak summer heat, as you can see in one of the images below. I think Glow Of The Heart can make a great contribution to a number of breeding programs, both northern and southern. It has many good traits to offer for breeding programs and is also just a gorgeous, late-season garden plant with a striking green throat.


Glow Of The Heart
2023

Glow Of The Heart
2021, mid-day, I am standing to create a shadow to allow me to get an accurate picture without glare or washing out due to over-exposure. The photo below is a couple of minutes later without me casting a shadow, for comparison.

Glow Of The Heart
2021, mid-day, with direct sun

Glow Of The Heart
Scape detail from 2020

Glow Of The Heart
2023 late evening

Glow Of The Heart
Clump in summer 2023

Glow Of The Heart
Rebloom scapes in the late summer/early fall with old scapes from summer still on the plant, showing their branching along with the rebloom.

Glow Of The Heart
2023 Clump late evening

Glow Of The Heart
2023 late afternoon

Glow Of The Heart
2023 late afternoon

Glow Of The Heart
2023 late afternoon