Colors - How do YOU describe your daylilies?

larry_2005

17 years ago

Sometimes (most of the time!) I am at a loss when trying to describe the colors of the blooms on my seedlings. I'm "color challenged, so to speak." Today, I found a chart on Wikipedia, which I think will help me quite bit. What I am curious about is this - is there a set of color samples available commercially? What I'm thinking of is some kind of color wheel or set of color strips that can be carried out to the garden to be used to "match" the color and find the color description?

Here is a link that might be useful: Wikipedia Color Chart

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Comments (5)

okbt
17 years ago
That's some chart! I know that if I tried to print it out the colors would be a bit different. How about those paint color strips? I would say there is no need to have every shade of the rainbow,but like for reds you can have an orange-red,blue-red,pink-red,or just like fire engine red.Go to a place like Home Depot and see what they have.Best thing is,they're free!
i_c_dillies
17 years ago
I like the good old box of CRAYOLA Crayons. Now those people know color. I'm serious too. I work at a flower farm and the color descriptions given by the plant people are so off the wall it's unbelievable.
Anyway, that's my thoughts--CRAYOLA--hands down!!

Lrae
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Maryl (Okla. Zone 7a)
17 years ago
There are two official horticulural color charts that I am aware of. The Royal Horticultural Society Color Chart (British) and the Munsel color chart (American). Below is a link comparing the accuracy of one to the other using a daylily as an example....In the catalogs and literature I've read the only one used (infrequently) has been the RHSCC.....I do know that personal descriptions are subjective. At a recent daylily show I purposely wore a pink shirt. The "pink" daylilies were definitely peach not pink compared to the shirt. I find descriptions of "purple" falling into my color range of Claret (maroonish)....The required use of a color chart description will probably never come into commercial play. How can you sell a "blue" rose if you need to state what color number it is off of the chart.

Here is a link that might be useful: Color Charts
Ed
17 years ago
I don't think it's useful to try to be so specific in describing a flower color when it changes considerably over the course of the day, soil conditions it's being grown in and whether it's viewed in direct or in-direct lighting.

The flowery color descriptions give me a grin!
Ed
sharons2
17 years ago
Maryl, is the British Royal Horticultural Society Color Chart a book or those fans of cards that you can get from the RHS for L170? Or are those fans based on the book Horticultural Colour Chart by Robert Francis Wilson? I have never seen the book, but I sure wish I had some accurate way of recording colors.

In the link that you gave, the RHS Colour Chart is compared to the Munsell Book of Color, but that seems hard to come by, too. There are a number of other Munsell books on color still in print. Would any of those include all the colors in the Munsell system? Does anybody know?

Here is a link to the RHS Colour Chart fans:
http://www.rhs.org.uk/Learning/Publications/pubs_library_colourchart.htm

And here is a link to an ebay auction that just ended for the Horticultural Colour Chart by Wilson. It shows a few pictures of the inside of the books.

Here is a link that might be useful: Horticultural Colour Chart (ebay)