Cultivar Name: Butter Dragon
Seedling Number: BCSDD3
Bloom Diameter: 6.5"
Scape Height: 32"
Branches: 3
Bud Count: 19
Bloom Season: Early
Rebloom: Yes
Color/Description: Flat, well-opening flower of pale yellow fading to near white by evening above chartreuse throat.
Ploidy: Tetraploid
Bloom Habit: Diurnal
Foliage: Dormant
Pod Parent: Butter Cream
Pollen Parent: Stardust Dragon
Year Bred: 2013
Rust Resistance: A+/3 year tested
Fertile: Both ways
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Comments: Butter Dragon is a beautiful flower that changes color through the course of the day, fading from a pale yellow in the early morning to a near white with yellow throat and thin yellow braid edge, which sometimes shows some small teeth and tentacles, by the end of the day, spending the majority of the afternoon in its white phase. The flower is very flat and opens extremely well, even after cool nights. The flower form can vary a bit, sometimes showing more recurve becoming a very round flower, at other times showing a narrower look that is quite spatulate in appearance. Sometimes it shows quite wide petals that makes the flower a more traditional wide-petalled form. Regardless of the particular form, the flower almost always shows some relief coming out of the throat onto the petals. It is one of those. plants that looks good almost every day throughout its full bloom season. The scapes are shorter than I like, but at 32" they are tall enough to show up well in the garden and it looks particularly good in front of taller cultivars, especially ones with purple flowers. The scapes show three branches, every once in a while I will see four branches on a few scapes, and some scapes on newer fans may only show two branches. There is heavy scape to fan ration creating a lot of scapes per clump, there is instant rebloom and in some years I see early fall rebloom. Even though you often see 'bouquet flower' days where there are lots of flowers open on any given day, the high scape to fan ratio, good bud counts and instant rebloom all combine to make for a long flowering season.
Butter Dragon is a perfect combination of both parents - Butter Cream and Stardust Dragon. I have loved Butter Cream since I first saw it years ago. I was very happy that Butter Cream scored high enough for my criteria that I could include it in my early breeding work, and it has contributed several interesting and useful seedlings. Butter Dragon is the first of those to be introduced. Stardust Dragon shows a wonderful near white flower and showed excellent rust resistance, but was impossible for me to get pods on and showed high thrips susceptibility. I used its pollen a good deal for the rust resistance, and I did get many seedlings with high rust resistance from it. However, many of them showed very poor thrips resistance, but luckily a few showed better thrips resistance and I have been gradually introducing them over the years, and have been using them in my breeding work both for the rest resistance and the wonderful clear coloring. However, many of the Stardust Dragon seedlings have also been fully or nearly pod sterile, so I have been very careful not to breed any of its offspring (siblings) together, and that has worked to restore fertility in the grandkids. Luckily, some seedlings from Stardust Dragon did show good pod fertility, and they have been my focus from that line. Butter Dragon can produce pods, though pollen is easier. I have produced pods on it every year I have tried. The plant shows fast increase and recovers from division quickly. It went through the last two years of my rust resistance screening with an A+ rating and shows moderate thrips resistance, better than either parent. The seedlings I have produced from Butter Dragon tend to show flat, open flowers with a range of pastel colors, and when crossed to taller partners, I often see taller scapes in the seedling bed.
Butter Dragon has been a favorite of mine for a long time and I have used it heavily in breeding, which is why it is only now getting introduce, twelve years after it germinated. Check out the numerous images of Butter Dragon below, showing both flower and clump, as well as early day and late afternoon images.
