Julie - That is quite a show-stopper! Lovely!!!!

Tahoe Snow Blizzard is 55" by Gossard. It is an EV and I am not sure how well it would do in 4B. Does anyone grow it?

Gossard's website Heavenly Gardens, is a treasure chest of tall white dormants!
55" Tahoe Snow Blizzard is the tallest white that he knows of. It is EV, but very hardy he says. Maryott's has it.
44" Heavenly Ghost Rider
43" Polar Bear Express
48" Blizzard Blast

Catch my drift?

I just did an instant buy on the LA. Tink is listing Lillian's Thin Ice, so now I will be receiving it this fall. I think it is really beautiful.

Teresa I think White Lies has the widest pedals, which is also on the auction.
BUDDY'S TOOTHY Hall 2014 32" tall

Fred - Your "whites" are always stunning! I can see that is where part of your hybridizing is focusing. You've nailed it on many of your intros! Nice job!

The thread "Wonderful White" in Daylilies forum This thread has whites of all sizes and shapes.

One special tall white that I am saving up for is Isabelle Rose, by Ellen Laprise. It is supposed to get 59". Does anyone grow it?

Fred, do you think any of your whites will grow beachside in Central FL? Zone 9a. I know you say they are SEV and that you are careful about labeling them.

Sev daylilies should grow well everywhere, over half of the flowers coming out of Florida are registered Sev. Check out Petit, Harry, DeVito, ect.

I have about a 60% failure rate with SEV's. My garden doesn't freeze and it is a litmus test for evergreens. Oh well. Some SEV's are classified that way for marketing purposes, so buying them is a gamble. Some are actually EV and they do well. Others aren't.

Thanks Fred.

Arlene - That's interesting what you said about losing 60% of your SEVs. I will have to pay closer attention to my seedlings that are probably SEVs. The only ones I've ever lost had dominate dormant genes in them.

florange.
I am surprised to hear the mortality rate of SEV plants there, does the shade provide any different results than fun sun? What I am asking is actually the reverse I guess. I know in my garden the trees provide some winter protection of plants, so do the ones planted out away from any winter protection survive any better than ones in protected zones? Does mulching or not mulching seem to make any difference?

I didn't realize you poor southies have as much trouble with dormants and sev's as we northers have with evergreens. What happens to the dormants - they get terminally cranky if they can't have their winter nap?

I have never had any problem with sev's and I live right on the Gulf Coast, less than a 1/2 mile from the water. The dormants are a different story, very few do well here.

Fred, I'm over 100 miles south of you and those 100 miles make a critical difference. While you were having very cold temperatures last winter, my garden never got lower than 42 degrees. And, yes, I'm on a barrier island with water on both sides--ocean on one side, intercoastal waterway on the other. The island is very narrow right here--3 blocks wide. The water warms us in the winter, and cools us in the summer.

I don't mulch because with FL rain, rot can be a real problem. Also, shade or sun doesn't seem to matter. Most of my daylilies get some of shade from palm trees.

Cranky? I guess if failure to thrive makes them cranky, you are right. But I don't think this is really a wide-spread problem down here. If you go inland 40 miles (towards Orlando) the winters are cold enough that most SEV's aren't a problem.

Becky, I think of daylily classifications on on a sliding scale, with evergreen at one end and dormant at the other. The SEV's are somewhere on that sliding scale. Some plants are closer to EV than DOR, and others are closer to DOR. That's where my problem lies--I can look at parents till I'm blue in the face, but I can't tell which parent is dominant in influencing this issue. The only thing I can do is try this plant or that plant knowing that it's 50/50 if the daylily will succeed. That's why I shop on the Lily Auction--to minimize the pain to my wallet when a plant won't grow.

I remember having failure to thrive with one Stamile EV. Don't remember which one. Anyway, when I realized the daylily wasn't happy, I looked up the parents of that plant. Every one was a dormant but the child of those parents was classified as an EV. Didn't understand that one and in this garden it was doomed.

I am even further south than you, Arlene, but a mile or so from the water. I've 'migrated' all my daylilies to the north side of the house now, so that they are in full shade in the winter. That way the sun can't warm the soil up until into March and it gives them at least a bit more cool 'rest' than out in the garden. I get a shorter bloom season through the year, but they last a lot longer this way.

The only white I've tried here so far was 'Joan Senior' and it did peter out after a few years even though it's an EV. I have a lot of problems with tree roots invading my flower beds, too. Very nice while it lasted.

Arlene - We are both on the east coast of Florida, but I am further south of you. And I live about 5 miles inland from the Indian River and another 2 miles or more from the beach. I've only lost a few daylilies. And I know they must have been dormants because they failed to survive when all other daylilies were fine. A couple of the plants did bloom ... poorly, at best. And then disappeared after 2 years. No roots, nothing. I am sure you are right about the sliding scale between EV and DOR.

I do not have any named daylilies, so I can't say for sure about any plant. Part of me likes to think that the "mixed mutts" I grow have enough EV and SEV in them to survive and for most ... thrive. Until recently, I didn't even know for sure the parentage of any of mine. Except a few (which I am guessing) that have a strong resemblance to seed names I received several years ago. Roses in Snow parent is the only one that I can see in the children seedlings I have. My newest seedlings do have the parentage labeled, so I should be able to determine more with those in the future.

Anything I purchase on the LA is because I am budget challenged. I only buy seeds. I have a theory that plants grown from seeds in an area that they did not originally come from, will adapt much better than a plant. Just a crazy theory, but my success rate has to have some kind of explanation. Most of my earlier ones were neglected the first couple of years, too, because I didn't know enough about daylilies do make them healthy and happy. Most all survived past the first two years except the ones I am sure were dormants. I now pay closer attention to the background genetics of any seeds I want to acquire. But I still like to stretch the boundaries when I grow seedlings from seed.

I, too, would question an EV with dormant parents. How could that happen? It doesn't seem like that could be accurate.

Micro climates are important. Even being surrounded by concrete on one or more sides can change things.

This is good advice for beginners (and not so beginners) regardless of region: Hopefully there are daylily clubs in your area that you can join (if you are not already a member). If you are that fortunate, talk to the members and find out which plants do well for them. If you can't attend meetings try Emails. See if there are gardens in the area that you can visit. (To find an AHS display Garden in your region: http://www.daylilies.org/AHSga... ) Check out the AHS Merit award winners for your region, the Stout winners and the Lenington All-American Award Winners (The Lenington All-American Award is given annually since 1970 to the daylily voted the best performer over a wide geographic area.) http://www.daylilies.org/AHSCu...

Good luck. You personally may have already done this, but it was worth mentioning for those others who might not.

I've been active in clubs for 10 yr. No longer. Politics interfered. Now, just enjoy the plants and blooms and go on with life. That suits me. Not too many public gardens in FL either, although the hybridizers have nice places.

Microclimates are rampant in FL. It depends how close to the water; how close to the sand ridge that goes down the middle of the state (it funnels cold down to South FL); which side of the peninsula you are on, etc. If I go north on A1A for 3 miles, it's much hotter or colder than my location because that part of the island is 6 blocks wide, rather than 3 blocks wide. It's just crazy.

Thanks for the information Arlene, I always had the impression daylilies would thrive anywhere in Florida, never to old to learn. I guess I got the idea from visiting the big growers, none were close to the coast and the daylilies were always so large.

I think all of Stamile daylilies came from dormant's because he moved south from New York. It doesn't surprise me that he got evergreens years later because each parent has about five generations of genes to work with and he was using ev with those dormant's because most of what he brought from NY did not do well in Florida. I have crossed two evergreens and got some dormant seedlings.