Background history:

'Earl Porter' is a dormant introduced in 2015 by Benz-J..

This plant can be found in our Plant Database at:
Daylily (Hemerocallis 'Earl Porter') .

Please join in, if you own this plant! We would love to know more! I award an acorn for performance information posted to this thread.



Daylily (Hemerocallis 'Earl Porter')

Just got this daylily in the second half of May 2021. Purchased due to the thread about the blackest daylilies, here ( The thread "Blackest?" in Daylilies forum ). Despite the later arrival it did make me a couple of blooms. I also managed to add some pollen and get a single seedpod from it in 2021. The seller told me it is a fast increaser, although they gave me 3 fans, and I counted 3 fans last week indicating zero increase. Still, it is settling in. Not yet been here a single year.

It was also not so black for me. But would be unfair to judge fully on the first year performance. 2022 should herald a better performance, and hopefully blacker coloration. (That is why I bought it as usually I would not buy daylilies that give less than 6" flowers unless they have something very special about them).

I will say it was hard to come by. It seemed to be quite sought after on the daylily auction (even the seeds go for crazy prices).

My seedlings where it is pod parent look healthy and will be planted out in May.
With regards to rust resistance, it was planted next to a RFK which brought rust into my garden (grrrr ). Earl Porter did get some rust from it, without doubt. But I treated it with fungicide [Clearys 336F, or tebuconazole I think] before things got bad (not sure if they would have got bad, but not taking any risks).

Well, I just spent a half hour looking through my pictures for some other looks at Earl, but the only one I found was the one Becky posted. Last summer was the first year of bloom in my garden for Earl. He sent up some scapes, but I think I'll wait a bit to grade it on its performance.

For those that ask, I tell them that Earl is pretty inconsisten given the conditions. I can say, when this thing is black, it's really dark. That photo is not touched up at all. It was really a saturated, dark bloom. Like most dark blooms, it helps if you have it planted where it can get some morning shade and you can get out and get a picture before the sun is hitting it directly. When the sun is high and shining through it, you see a lot more of it's underlying colors, and you have to be a lot better photographer than me to get it to look as dark as it does to your eye.

I tried a reciprocal cross with Earl and Ginny Pearce's Raven Lore, which isn't quite as dark but typically has nicer form and vigor. I'll show you Raven Lore because the color in this picture is actually pretty close to what Earl looks like on a sunny day in my garden.

Raven Lore


I got seeds from both plant's pods, but none of them germinated. The only two crosses I had where no seeds germinated. I'm not sure what's up with that.