Background history:

'American Freedom' is a semi-evergreen tetraploid introduced in 2003 by Grace-Smith. This beauty is registered by Larry Grace and Frank Smith.

More information can be found in an article on this website:
http://47daylilies.blogspot.co...

American Freedom is an early EMO bloomer with possible re-bloom. It has earned the following AHS awards: Award of Merit: 2009 and Honorable Mention: 2006. It is pod and pollen fertile with currently 27 registered children: https://garden.org/plants/pare...

This plant can be found in the NGA Plant Database at:
Daylily (Hemerocallis 'American Freedom') .

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.





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Daylily (Hemerocallis 'American Freedom')

I bought this plant on Sept. 28th 2016. I drove over to Ga. to pick it up along with a few more I had ordered. For some reason everything seemed to be in a rush that day, and there was not much visiting or chatting after we arrived.. Mostly just drove over and picked up the plants that were already dug and bagged. So I never saw the plants, never even thought to look until I got home and was ready to plant them. 'American Freedom' was one of the plants I was most interested in because of the great stats, and the price of only $5.00.
Anyhow when I pulled the plant out I was shocked to see no foliage, a damaged crown, and some roots.


I called back over to where we picked up the plants and was told they were sorry, that they intended to mention it to me, but due to the rush had forgotten to mention it. However they said they had experience with such plants and that it should be fine. I was a little leary about the plant recovering, but should have known better, I have abused my share of daylilies and know how tough they can be.
Needless to say, receiving the plant so late in the year it did not bloom this past season. I did take this photo of the plant in Nov. 2016 and as you can see, it was three fans and looked pretty healthy. So I am looking forward to seeing if it lives up to the stats I selected it for, hope to see blooms this year.

I got this plant last year, planted it and it bloomed beautifully for me. It is a bright flower, more orange or salmon for me - more like sunset clouds. The flower is a lovely shape although not real tall on its first flowering after being transplanted. I will be taking photos this year and will work on determining the height of the foliage and the blooms. I did not try to set seeds on it because I wanted it to have time to grow in my garden. This year will be different.

I had 'American Freedom' at one time, many years ago, but eventually the deer (or drought, or something) did for it.

I very recently reacquired it late last season. It put up one bloom scape which was not tall (similar to your experience, Barb), which had a very few flowers.

Now the funny thing is that I have forgotten now exactly why I re-purchased this plant. I think it may have been because I was looking at some images of some old seedlings (no longer here) which I had from it, and was considering its use in a cross with some other daylilies (though dang if I can remember which, and to what end). Here are images of two of the old-and-no-longer-here seedlings, so you can maybe see why my interest was stirred again:



As I recall, I really liked the flowers on those seedlings (well, except that they tended to splotch ), but the scapes were short (and I despise short scapes). Whether either of those had to do with 'American Freedom' (the short scapes were probably not from the other parent), or whether the scape height had to do with the poor conditions in that raised bed, I don't know. (The seedlings also did not rebloom, but again...) What I should have done was kept the seedlings, upgraded their living conditions, and crossed them to something taller...

Now I will have to think about what crosses, if any, I will want to make with this plant this season, now that I have it again. (I confess that I did auto-make one cross on it last season (with a mate that I was using in most of my crosses), and got iirc all of one seed. I guess I will need to see what happened with that seed...)

I purchased American Freedom in 2008. The first couple of years were sparse blooms and very little increase. 8 years later I finally have a clump, although not enough to divide. It has a lovely bloom but am not happy with the short scapes. I was hoping once it settled in that scapes would be a bit taller. It will set pods once in awhile if it likes the pollen. I have not planted any seeds from the crosses to see what the seedlings might be like. Overall, it is an alright plant, just does not increase much in my zone.

I have two seedlings out of America Freedom crossed with seedlings out of Fringy and Talladega. They are nothing special but do seem to have good bud count.

It reblooms for me in Zone 4. I like the round shape of the flower.

It has pretty blooms but is shorter than listed height and slow increaser in zone 6b.

Disappointing to hear so many reports of short scape height. I will try to make certain to check the height of my scapes this year and hope to get the full 28" height as registered.

If I remember right, I just got this one last spring, & it went on to bloom nicely for its first year. I do wish it were taller & was hoping that it would improve this year, but maybe not. Of course, too early to tell if it will be back this year, but really looking forward to seeing it.

It sounds like everyone just purchased this last year. I fall into that same category, although I purchased it later in the season and haven't seen any blooms from it yet. I purchased it largely because of the patriotic name (I'm putting it near my 'Libery' apple tree), but also because it appears to have really good substance, it has shorter scapes (which I desire), and excellent bud and branch stats. I am hoping to hybridize with this and get some rich-colored seedlings with thick petals and lots of blooms. Hopefully, I will see some blooms and be able to come back and post some pictures of it this year.

Update on American Freedom after another year. It has not gotten taller, but really good bloom count, lovely blooms. Very slow to multiply. It a had added a fan, but lost one, so still at 2 fans. Would be nice to see this in a clump