I did a white daylily sortation for Stuart Kendig's white daylily project today. Blooms need to be picked between 10 am and 2 pm and sorted into the groups by how white they are.

There are no daylilies in group 1 (white).
Gentle Shepherd and Sagarmatha and a few others are in Group 2.
Group 3 is very white, almost a group 2
Group 4 is near white
Group 5 has a distinct coloration.

Stuart published an article in Daylily Journal (Winter 2017) about this project; he is hoping to bring language to talk about whiteness in daylilies to the discussion. Several people, including hybridizers with white programs, are participating in this multi-year project, and have identified some very promising seedlings in the pipeline.

My sortation this morning evaluated about 60 "white" daylilies blooming in my garden today, many of them historic. Most of the ones we think of as white are actually varying degrees of pale yellow; some have a pinkish cast. It is fascinating to see them all together, and to enjoy all the different forms and flourishes that hybridizers have developed over the years.

Stuart also admins a Facebook page "White Daylilies" and is hoping to publish an article covering progress in the near future.

I have yet come across a daylily as white as Gentle Shepherd. It's even harder to see a really white tet.

Since I've read the article in the Daylily Journal you mentioned I'm interested in this topic - but I have only about 30 near whites in my garden and Sagarmatha is not available in Europe. But I have a very white diploid plant with unknown origin, whiter than Gentle Shepherd:

Gentle Shepherd and the unknown near white:


whole plant


petal of Gentle Shepherd on unknown near white

kousa said:I have yet come across a daylily as white as Gentle Shepherd. It's even harder to see a really white tet.

My best near white tets are:
Lime Frost and White Crinoline

White Crinoline and Gentle Shepherd

@Nightlily - are you on Facebook? If so, you could join the White Daylilies group and post these photos there.

Stuart asks that we do sorts (he calls them sortations) using at least 16 different "white" daylilies, including either Gentle Shepherd or Sagarmatha.

His website for Perfect Perennials is http://kendigdaylilies.com/ - there is some more information there, including email

Nightlily said:Since I've read the article in the Daylily Journal you mentioned I'm interested in this topic - but I have only about 30 near whites in my garden and Sagarmatha is not available in Europe. But I have a very white diploid plant with unknown origin, whiter than Gentle Shepherd:

Gentle Shepherd and the unknown near white:


whole plant


petal of Gentle Shepherd on unknown near white

Is your seedling on the right? That is truly whiter than Gentle shepherd! How exciting!

Nightlily said: I have a very white diploid plant with unknown origin, whiter than Gentle Shepherd:

Gentle Shepherd and the unknown near white:


petal of Gentle Shepherd on unknown near white

Sue @Nightlily
That certainly does look whiter! So you have no idea of its origin?

I think Mr. Kendig said in the article that members of the white group needed to be growing either Sagarmatha or Gentle Shepherd but not necessarily both? And 30 near white cultivars certainly seems like a goodly number. Plus I bet he would love to have a European involved! Especially one as observant as you are.

I'd like to join too. I acquired some more near whites last fall and this spring. We were at the Holmes' garden last weekend and bought 'Casper's Twist' (Holmes-S 2017) which is registered as "pale cream, in the peach range… appears near white in the garden.", which is true. We also bought 'Lighter Side of Life' (Holmes-S 2008), a very white tetraploid.

Next year I hope to have enough near-whites to make a contribution to the study.

Pat (Edit: used Ann for awhile)

Karen @kousa, I think 'Lighter Side of Life' may be in the running to be the whitest Tet, or at least tied. It's from a cross with Heavenly Angel Ice which appears very white in the garden.

Pat (edited; I used Ann for awhile)

Hortaholic said: I think 'Lighter Side of Life' may be in the running to be the whitest Tet, or at least tied. It's from a cross with Heavenly Angel Ice which appears very white in the garden.

Ann

Wow, that looks really white, Ann! I wonder how it compares to Gentle Shepherd. Would it be in group2 or group3 according to Mr. Kendig's scale?

kousa said:
Wow, that looks really white, Ann! I wonder how it compares to Gentle Shepherd. Would it be in group2 or group3 according to Mr. Kendig's scale?

Sandy said Stuart rated it very white - in his Group 3, or maybe even group 2 with Sagarmatha and Gentle Shepherd, I'm not positive. And then [Stuart] said there were no Tets that white. So she gently pointed out that LSoL is a tetraploid.🙂 I hope I didn't misquote her.

Pat {edited to change name from Ann & add [Stuart] to clarify}

robinjoy said:@Nightlily - are you on Facebook? If so, you could join the White Daylilies group and post these photos there.

Stuart asks that we do sorts (he calls them sortations) using at least 16 different "white" daylilies, including either Gentle Shepherd or Sagarmatha.

His website for Perfect Perennials is http://kendigdaylilies.com/ - there is some more information there, including email

Since the article in the Daylily Journal was published I'm in direct contact with Stuart, he has got all this pictures and information about the plant directly but as I'm living so far away it makes not really sense to join the white evaluation project but I'm very interested in the results.

kousa said:

Is your seedling on the right? That is truly whiter than Gentle shepherd! How exciting!

It is not a seedling, a friend bought it with a tag 'Daylily white' in a garden center - and the plant is really exciting, it has strong stems, big flowers and many buds.

Hortaholic said:

Sue @Nightlily
That certainly does look whiter! So you have no idea of its origin?

I know, where it was bought but this garden center did not offer any comparable plant with the tag 'Daylily white' since then.

Hortaholic said:I think Mr. Kendig said in the article that members of the white group needed to be growing either Sagarmatha or Gentle Shepherd but not necessarily both? And 30 near white cultivars certainly seems like a goodly number. Plus I bet he would love to have a European involved! Especially one as observant as you are.

I'm a little bit envolved but white daylilies are not my personal hybridizing goal - the reason for this is amongst others that the soil in our garden is not good for near whites - most of them turn out vanilla yellow.

Hortaholic said:
Next year I hope to have enough near-whites to make a contribution to the study.

Ann

I'm looking forward to reading about your experience!

I had some different whites blooming today, so did a second sortation. Stuart has posted both on the White Daylilies Facebook page.

Ann, @Hortaholic there is still not a tet that has been sorted into group 2. If you can gather enough blooms to make 16, including Gentle Shepherd or Sagarmatha, I'm sure Stuart would be happy to get a sortation from you - the idea of having a larger collection of whites is to have enough blooming at the same time. It would be great to have people from different areas participating because you often have different flowers in your collection.

Sue, @nightlily "white" daylilies are mostly shades of vanilla into pale yellow, likely not your soil.
It would be great to have you participate in the study. I brought the blooms inside to enjoy for the day after I had picked them and done the sortation.

robinjoy said:
Sue, @nightlily "white" daylilies are mostly shades of vanilla into pale yellow, likely not your soil.

We did some tests with friends - in my garden most of the near whites are yellow and most of the pinks are peach (chalky soil, quite hot summers)

robinjoy said:
It would be great to have you participate in the study. I brought the blooms inside to enjoy for the day after I had picked them and done the sortation.

Due to the fact that I'm working on season extenders my daylily season is usually a very long one (first cultivars flower at the end of April, last in October), even if we have hardly any rebloom on southern cultivars. So my about 30 near whites do not flower at the same time and I can not compare them like you. But I'm very interested in the results of your observations!

robinjoy said:
Ann, @Hortaholic there is still not a tet that has been sorted into group 2.

Wendy @robinjoy, Thanks for clarifying that, I wasn't sure what Sandy said. She said Stuart had thought it was diploid, but it's tetraploid.

If I said this already, pardon, but if I would have to participate via Facebook I'd decline. I'm only there because my family holds me hostage.

Today 'Casper's Twist' bloomed in the shade in a bucket of water (no opportunity to plant it yet). Rather than "pale cream, in the peach range" as registered it seemed more yellow with hints of melon. To try to eliminate the yellow I'd try crossing it with a pale melon, pink, or lavender. And then probably cross within the F1.

'Casper's Twist'

Nightlily said:
Due to the fact that I'm working on season extenders my daylily season is usually a very long one (first cultivars flower at the end of April, last in October), even if we have hardly any rebloom on southern cultivars.

Sue @Nightlily, that's a much longer season than in my garden, USDA zone 6a, 40th parallel latitude.

Are some of the earliest and latest your own seedlings / registrations?

Would you mind sharing your approximate location in Austria so I can look it up on Weatherspark? It needs the nearest commercial airport.

Pat (edited to change name from Ann)

Hortaholic said:

Sue @Nightlily, that's a much longer season than in my garden, USDA zone 6a, 40th parallel latitude.

Are some of the earliest and latest your own seedlings / registrations?

Would you mind sharing your approximate location in Austria so I can look it up on Weatherspark? It needs the nearest commercial airport.

Ann

Hello Ann,
officially our region here is in USDA zone 6b/7a - 47th parallel latitude. But besides this we live in a very special small climate zone called Illyric climate - in the south east of Austria influeced by the Adriatic Sea (the Alps shield us from every storm or rain system coming from the Atlantic Ocean and hitting Europe).

Here you find a map with the 4 climate zones of Austria (the brown one is where I live):
https://yclat-resources.azuree...

The nearest commercial airport is Graz Thalerhof - similar climate, not far away.

I've collected for about 10 years every ee, la, vla and northern rebloomer cutlivar i was able to get - and now I'm working with this plants. The earliest are H. middendorffii (species), Brunette and Judge Orr - children may flower next year (did a lot of pollen freezing the last two years) but amongst the lates flowering plants there are some from Olallie (Vermont) and some of my own registrations (7 so far, prefix Gekko Garden). Hopefully there will follow some this year to - at the moment I'm taking records for registration on some others.

Ann - no, you don't have to use Facebook - we send our results to Stuart via email (he and others sometimes repost the results to the Facebook group).

Climate zones along a given latitude can vary greatly depending on prevailing winds and nearby bodies of water or mountains. The northern California central valley has palm trees and rosemary shrubs!