The Best Foliage

14 years ago

I've seen this post come up before many years ago and would love to get your comments on which daylilies in your garden have the best foliage.

Foliage that is short compared to the height of the flowers and has a graceful arch to the leaves. Also foliage that stays green and clean throughout the season. I am primarily interested in recently introduced tetraploids.

There has to be a few good plants out there that stand out as having great foliage?

Mike

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Comments (3)

shive
14 years ago
Mike - With the intense and prolonged heatwave this season, most foliage looks ratty and very badly burned. I think that's why you aren't getting much response. In most "normal" seasons, I find daylilies that are fertilized in the early spring and regulary watered have good foliage.

When thinking about past years, two come to mind immediately: Great White and Always Afternoon. Grape Twizzler is a UF that always has great looking foliage.

Debra
nat4b
14 years ago
This year when everything looks so bad there were several noticeable because they kept the green foliage. I mostly have older varieties. I can think of one more or less newer, Timeless Majesty, great looking foliage all season, even now, but it is a new plant here (although the other DLs I planted at the same time look awful).
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mike_z6
Original Author
14 years ago
Debra and Nat thanks for responding, Debra just let me say I have followed your post for some time now and I think the pictures you take and the information you provide is fantastic. You have a talent for angling the shot just right and the light setting show the flower as it truly is.

The hybridizing work I do with my plants is aimed at certain flower characteristics but this year I would like to incorporate genes that come from plants that could pass on beautiful foliage to their offspring.

I prefer a true fan with blue green arching foliage that is short compared to the scape height (not to much to ask for). There must be a few cultivars that have these characteristics coupled with good disease resistance.

The plants that I have seen over the years with the best foliage are mini's from Grace Stamile. At least these are the ones I've had the opportunity to work with.

Most of the seedlings I am producing now are large flowered and the foliage on some of them is 3 feet tall.

I was wondering if you have ever come across a variant that has visibly different leaves such as short and stocky or green and arching? It would be fantastic to have a break in daylily foliage that is truly different.

If hybridizers can completely change the shape and color of the flowers there is the possibility of altering the foliage also. The foliage is most likely controlled by a different set of genes which are much more stable then the genes that control the flower structures.

There is always a chance that a variant will come on the scene.

Mike