New forum member here with a strange question. :-D

Last May I planted a half dozen 'Late Summer Breeze' because I was looking for a tall clear yellow that would bloom at the very end of the season, and that one is described everywhere as being "very late, August/Sept." So I was surprised when several (not all) of them flowered in mid July but thought they had probably been knocked a bit off kilter by the division/shipping process. The other fans didn't put up scapes at all last year. But hey, no problem, 2020 was crazy all around and so they would of course flower at the proper time in 2021...

Except that they are all in bud now, in mid-JUNE! In fact they are right up there in development with Clarity of Purpose (an Early and which was my first to bloom last year on June 23rd), and even a bit ahead of Lavender Heartthrob (an Extra Early which nevertheless starts here about June 28th).

My 'mid-season' Starman's Gift flowers here in early to mid July, and Fleur de Rocaille (a 'mid/late') blooms here in late July. That said, Lime Frost which is also described as "very late", bloomed on July 9th last year from fans planted in May. All my daylilies are in the same soil and sun conditions so I can't blame the too-early "Very Late" ones on that.

In real-world conditions, is a "Very Late" daylily based on a particular zone, i.e., maybe Late Summer Breeze and Lime Frost are late bloomers in colder zones but behave more like MidSeason ones in zone 7??

If you grow Late Summer Breeze, when does it start blooming in your zone? Thanks!

The time a plant blooms based on extra early, till very late is all based on the plants growing in the hybridizers garden.
So it can be a very misleading description, unless you know where the plant was hybridized. I do wish that the location of the hybridizers garden would be included in the registration info.

Ahh, you've discovered the dirty little secret of daylily blooming. The bloom times given can be way off. Seedfork is right that it is based on what the hybridizer sees in their garden.

I've bought many daylilies looking for extra early or very late only to be disappointed.

Olallie Daylilies sell unregistered plants that reliably bloom late in zone 7. I'm sure they have a few yellows to choose from.

If I find a cultivar I have blooms way off from the registration I try to write a comment letting others know. I wish more people would do that so people could make better choices on what to purchase.

Late Summer Breeze is registered as a mid-late which would have it starting to bloom around late July in Maine where the hybridizer, Barth, lives. It sounds like the description doesn't fit the registration data.
Daylily (Hemerocallis 'Late Summer Breeze')
That still doesn't explain why it would be blooming with earlies though.

Had a thought while doing the chickens this morning.....With the longer bloom season in zone 7 is it possible these scapes are prebloom? Maybe the plants were preparing to rebloom last fall. Are the early scapes outside the fan, or inside the first or 2nd leaves of the fan? That might explain why they are blooming early. If so, they should also send up mid-late scapes and bloom at their normal time.

Char,
Is there a "official" name for those "prebloom" scapes? Seems like I have seen several different names used for them, and even on the Robin there did not seem to be agreement on what exactly to call them? Or is that the official name?

moodyblue said:New forum member here with a strange question. :-D

Last May I planted a half dozen 'Late Summer Breeze' because I was looking for a tall clear yellow that would bloom at the very end of the season, and that one is described everywhere as being "very late, August/Sept." So I was surprised when several (not all) of them flowered in mid July but thought they had probably been knocked a bit off kilter by the division/shipping process. The other fans didn't put up scapes at all last year. But hey, no problem, 2020 was crazy all around and so they would of course flower at the proper time in 2021...

Except that they are all in bud now, in mid-JUNE!

This could probably be due to the weather. A lot of my late bloomers bloom when it's usually very very hot, from July - September. However, it has been extremely hot these past few days or weeks. My guess is that if they're in a climate or weather patterns that seem normal for them, they may bloom early.

Seedfork said:Char,
Is there a "official" name for those "prebloom" scapes? Seems like I have seen several different names used for them, and even on the Robin there did not seem to be agreement on what exactly to call them? Or is that the official name?

@sooby

I don't remember if SSC ever worked on defining "prebloom" while I was on the committee. It's not in the dictionary and even though rebloom would fit for any scapes that follow, prebloom is different. I took a quick look at the robin and found "prebloom" mentioned going back to 1997. It's the most common term I've ever heard for these types of scapes. What else have you heard them called Larry?

I can't recall exactly, but it was mentioned on the Robin just recently and someone other than me said there were not familiar with the term and asked what it was exactly? It seems to me Maurice might have used a different term, but unfortunately I am not sure.

I have a lot of registered lates that do not bloom late here. Those bred in Florida tend to bloom early (English Lavender and Twentieth Century Fox). I have several that bloom mid rather than late. It's frustrating when you buy them because of their lateness, and they aren't late for you. I have had some like El Desperado that bloomed early for three years and then started blooming ML in subsequent seasons.

Char said:

@ sooby

I don't remember if SSC ever worked on defining "prebloom" while I was on the committee. It's not in the dictionary and even though rebloom would fit for any scapes that follow, prebloom is different.

No I don't recall that subject ever coming up.

bxncbx said:Ahh, you've discovered the dirty little secret of daylily blooming. The bloom times given can be way off. Seedfork is right that it is based on what the hybridizer sees in their garden.

I've bought many daylilies looking for extra early or very late only to be disappointed.

Olallie Daylilies sell unregistered plants that reliably bloom late in zone 7. I'm sure they have a few yellows to choose from.

Makes sense! and I feel silly that I hadn't thought of that before. So for example, given that I'm in Zone 7 on Long Island (although not near the water anymore, as my previous gardens were) if the hybridizer is, say, in Zone 6 or 5, their "late" probably translates into my "midseason"?

This will also teach me to doublecheck the registration 'season' rather than automatically assume that what a nursery's description claims matches that. I am starting to wonder whether Homestead's description last year (it isn't on this year's list) may have mentioned "August/Sept for us" and of course they are Zone 6a. "Duh" on my part!

I did get a daylily from Olallie last year: Fleur de Rocaille, which they described as blooming third week in July. I did get a few flowers last year during the second and third week of July and so that seems right on. Their fans were small to begin with but they ended up being the most robust ones in the planting by the end of the season and also this spring!

Char said:Had a thought while doing the chickens this morning.....With the longer bloom season in zone 7 is it possible these scapes are prebloom? Maybe the plants were preparing to rebloom last fall. Are the early scapes outside the fan, or inside the first or 2nd leaves of the fan? That might explain why they are blooming early. If so, they should also send up mid-late scapes and bloom at their normal time.

Darn it, I am just seeing this now (it has been a crazy day) and can't go out and check because it's raining heavily, and by the time it's over it will be dark. But I will check the position of the scapes tomorrow for sure, and report! :-D

SonoveShakespeare said:

This could probably be due to the weather. A lot of my late bloomers bloom when it's usually very very hot, from July - September. However, it has been extremely hot these past few days or weeks. My guess is that if they're in a climate or weather patterns that seem normal for them, they may bloom early.

Hmmm.... good thought. We did have a spate of above-normal temperatures here during the last week of May. Normally it is high 60s-low 70s at that time but I see from my garden journal that on May 21st it was 75, then 85F on the 22nd, 88F on the 23rd, in the high 70s from the 24th through the 26th, and then 81F on the 27th. Then a cold front came through and the next four days were below normal, with highs in the mid 50s to low 60s (I even noted that I had to turn the heat back on, lol).

Then another spate of above normal temps starting on June 5th: 88F that day, 90F on the 6th, and in the mid to high 80s for the next three days. Normally we are in the mid to at most high 70s during the first week in June.

Maybe those two spates of "July-August" temps were what pushed the scapes up early on both Late Summer Breeze and Lime Frost?

Now of course I became curious about Lime Frost which does say 'very late' in the registration info. It is a Stamile hybrid from 1990. Ferreting around to find their location, I see that they were last in Florida but I also found a Houzz forum comment saying that "they used to be on Long Island." So that got me wondering whether they were in my zone when they registered Lime Frost as Very Late.

Thanks to Google, I found an issue of a 2006 Long Island Daylily Society publication that outlined the history of daylily breeding on Long Island. It mentions that the Stamile garden in northwestern Suffolk county (not too far from where I garden now) became a regional display garden in 1981...and that the Stamiles relocated to Florida in 1991 which is the year after they registered Lime Frost. So by this I can assume (?) that under normal weather conditions, Lime Frost *should* be a very late bloomer for me? although my fans from Homestead last year did flower on July 9th after being planted in May. Looks like they have been pushed earlier this year also. Maybe next year these will be Very Late? :-D

One trick you can try is using this forum. Each month we post pictures of what posted for us. Most of us have our zones listed in our header. So you could look at last years "August Daylilies" or look at the end of "July Daylilies". Check the zone of the poster to make sure it's near your zone, and look for plants that bloom for them when you want your plants to bloom.

Make sure not to click the August Seedlings by mistake. You won't be able to buy those.

moodyblue said:Maybe those two spates of "July-August" temps were what pushed the scapes up early on both Late Summer Breeze and Lime Frost?

With only two spates being extremely hot, and the rest being cooler days, I doubt that this would cause those scapes to push up early.

As you said before, "Hmmm...good thought." Yeah, it was just a thought.

I agree more with Larry, @ seedfork about those daylilies having pre-blooms. It just makes more sense.

Flowering season for daylilies will always depend not only on where the daylily was hybridized but also on the weather each year in the location where it is grown, as well as the actual growing conditions provided by the gardener.
Daylilies do not use any specific conditions (usually related to the weather) to start the development of their scape and flowers. When they are a certain size they will start to produce a scape and produce a new growing point. When the new growing point is large enough the next scape will be started. Since temperature very strongly affects how fast plants grow and develop it will strongly affect how quickly a daylily produces its scapes and therefore when it flowers.

Temperature will affect the flowering of daylilies in much the same way that it affects the amount of pigment in flowers. There will be an optimum temperature for the development of the scape.

Arisumi, a researcher, grew the cultivar 'Purity' at 55F, 65F, 75F, 85F and 95F. He brought groups of plants inside to grow at the specific temperatures on different dates. Those brought inside in November and December are described below.
The average time to first flower depended on the temperature. The plants grown at 55F (growth was too slow) and 95F (growth was too poor) did not flower during his observations.

At 65F one set of plants (brought inside in November) flowered but after the end of the observations and when the temperatures were no longer controlled and were above 65F. Arisumi estimated that they would have started flowering after 170 days (November). At 75F the plants started flowering about 135 days (November). At 85F the plants (November) started flowering about 109 days.

For plants brought inside in December, those grown at 65F were estimated to start flowering in about 140 days. Those grown at 75F started flowering about 107 days and the one that flowered at 85F started after 109 days.

Temperatures of 85F and 95F were detrimental to the growth of the daylilies, specifically the cultivar 'Purity'. Presumably, that may have been because the temperatures were constant for both day and night. Arisumi wrote "At 85° and 95° the plants grew rapidly during the first 3 to 4 weeks and then became progressively chlorotic and the older leaves dried prematurely"

I took some pics this morning of the Late Summer Breeze scapes and took note of where all the other daylilies are, in that regard, also. In that bed, I have:

Lavender Heartthrob = "extra early" (Stamile 2000) but oddly enough this is the only daylily in this bed that has NO scapes at all yet! Last year most of its flowers were between July 1st and 12th, although 'most' is being generous; I think only one fan actually bloomed. The rest did not.

Starman's Gift = "midseason" (Burkey) has scapes now. Last year, bloomed at the same time as Lavender Heartthrob (which was obviously not my intention, lol)

Fleur de Rocaille = "midseason" (Whitacre) has scapes now. Last year, bloomed in the second and third week of July.

Lime Frost = "very late" (Stamile while on Long Island) has scapes now. Last year, began blooming on July 9th.

Late Summer Breeze = "midseason/late" on registration (Barth) although advertised by Homestead as "August Sept" flowering (I guess that's what it does in zone 6a?) has scapes now. Last year, flowered in late July, which seems to be right on target with the registration, if not the vendor, lol. And definitely not my intention, because I wanted it and Lime Frost to be the last/late ones together. Oh well, lol

I have no idea why Lavender Heartthrob isn't even putting up any scapes yet; they were planted as three double fans last year and that's what they still are...only a bit larger now.

Here's a photo of where the scapes are coming up on Late Summer Breeze. Does this help to figure out what type of scape they are? (I couldn't find a post suggesting what size photos should be, so I took a guess at 800 pixels wide. What size is recommended here?)

Just as an FYI, I have Clarity of Purpose in a different bed. It is an "early" near-white by Mike Huben (Massachusetts) and started flowering on June 23rd last year. Judging from the current scapes and buds, I am guessing probably closer to the 28th-30th this year and so I will see whether my eventual photo ends up being in the "June daylilies" or "July dayliles" thread!

I did put in several new daylilies last month but they are all either single or double fans and so I don't actually expect to see any of them flower this year. They are all in different beds and so I'm not trying for successive bloom periods like I did in the bed where the Late Summer Breeze/Lime Frost/Lavender Heartthrob/Starman's Gift/Fleur de Rocaille are.

(New ones: Two Cats Dancing, Two Cats Laughing, Heavenly United We Stand, Hawkwoman, and one Heavenly Angel Kisses as a bonus plant.)