Daylily Nut -- Hemerocallis 'Bleach Blonde'
2006 Registration
WETZEL (2006), EERe Noct.ext. fr. Dor. dip. 22", 4 1/4", 3 branches, 16 buds. Light yellow self sun-fading to platinum blonde, above yellow throat. {H. 'Rosy Returns' x [(H. 'Stella de Oro' x H. 'Janice Brown') x H. Dumortieri]} Seedling #03-RR-22. Very fertile both ways.
Take an EE species (H. Dumortieri) and cross it with an EE child of two stout medal winners (H. 'Stella de Oro' and H. 'Janice Brown'). Evaluate the 22 seedlings that bloomed from this cross and select the two earliest. Cross one of these with an early, eyed near-white, and you come up with H. 'Penguin Promenade', a seedling with unprecedented clear color in an EE which has proven to be a parent of EE continuous bloomers. Cross the other one (shown at left -- a slightly smaller, narrower flower with a red eye and reddish overcast across the entire flower, which occasionally reblooms) with a patented everblooming daylily (H. 'Rosy Returns' -- shown at right). If you happen to get a fully everblooming, exotic form, flower which sun bleaches to an extreme degree, such that it starts out light yellow, but approaches white by afternoon on sunny days, then you probably have a daylily with distinction. That is how H. 'Bleach Blonde' came to be.
Both the sun fading characteristic and the rather unruly (almost Unusual) form of H. 'Bleach Blonde' are depicted in the photo at the top. This is its official registration photo. Both examples are really necessary to show the variability that this flower can exhibit. The photo was taken in the evening after a sunny day. The flower at left was kept outside in the sun all day, while the flower at right was brought indoors in the morning and kept in shade all day. I don't know of any other yellow that sun fades to this extreme.
Although in my opinion, the current Official AHS defintion of Unusual Forms is hopelessly ambiguous in many ways, H. 'Bleach Blonde' usually exhibits a combination of two of the three crispate forms. By the "rule of threes", all three segments (either petals or sepals) must exhibit an unusual form. However it is not clear whether all three petals must exhibit the same crispate form or may combine any of the three different crispate forms that are all lumped into the definition of "crispate". (In the case of H. 'Bleach Blonde', all three petals usually show pinching and/or twisting in various combinations. Also, with rare exception all three sepals "revolve upon themselves in the manner of a wood shaving" which fits the definition of a Cascade -- although no guidance is provided about how much curl is enough.) The photo at right shows a clear example of H. 'Bleach Blonde' in Pinched Crispate form. However a sampling of more typical flowers shows much more variability. See the picture below.
Since I have no adequate guidance from the AHS definition of Unusual Form, I will probably not register it as an Unusual Form. I simply choose to describe H. 'Bleach Blonde' as an Unruly Form or a Flamboyant Form, with considerable potential for passing Unusual Form characteristics to small flowered EE everbloomers (not a common combination of traits in the current gene pool).
H. 'Bleach Blonde' starts blooming about the same time as H. 'Stella de Oro', and puts out scapes continuously until frost. Being a grandchild of the species, it is very vigorous and increases rapidly, which is why I can consider introducing it just three years after its first bloom. Foliage is a healthy green. It is narrow, consistent with most everbloomers, and is not afflicted much by bug problems or late summer browning.
The DaylilyNut Farm has never had rust. It is state inspected, and is located about 25 miles west of Baltimore, MD. In 2006 the garden was moved to a cold-pocket velley, on the boundary between USDA climate zones 5 and 6 (coldest winter night is about -10F).
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Pete Wetzel
P.O. Box 21
Eldersburg, MD 21784
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