Background history:

'Give Me Eight' is a semi-evergreen diploid introduced in 1993 by Bill and Joyce Reinke of Stephens Lane Gardens in Bells, Tennessee:
http://daylily.net/gardens/ste...

Juli started a thread about the Reinke's and their daylilies:
The thread "ATP Series: The Daylilies of Bill and Joyce Reinke" in Daylilies forum

"Give me Eight" is a mid-season to late bloomer. It has earned the following Honorable Mention: 1998 AHS award. It is both pod and pollen fertile with 29 registered children: http://garden.org/plants/paren...

This plant can be found in the ATP Plant Database at:
Daylily (Hemerocallis 'Give Me Eight') .

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.





Also, please consider adding a "Local Report" to the ATP Plant Database! Thank you!

Daylily (Hemerocallis 'Give Me Eight')

This is another new one in my garden. It decided to give me six instead of eight, but I'm sure that was because it hadn't settled in yet. The bloom was okay. Nothing spectacular, but not ugly. Just kind of so-so. I expect that it will be much better next year.

This one is new for me this year. It was planted in clay-like soil with no fertilizers and still performed well. The blooms were a little off in terms of shape, but they were big and still pretty. The blooms had more of a greenish cast than I realized when I first purchased them, so a note to those considering purchasing this is that this is almost more of a pale yellow-green than a near-white.

The plant was moved a second time this season (in September) and is still doing well and growing green foliage.

I should comment that ALL of my blooms had 4 petals and 4 sepals.

Also, this is the parent plant to my current favorite daylily: Titan of Ice

@Beckygardener - Becky, this is the second time (in a row) that I've posted comments to the Daylily of the Day and haven't been awarded an acorn--is there something I'm missing? (I've seen other people receive acorns for posting far less than I have, so I imagine it's not the content...and I'm pretty sure you've awarded DotD acorns to people who made posts after me, so....I'm confused )

Thank you

Sent you a tree-mail.

I have grown 'Give Me Eight' for about 8 years and it is hardy in my zone 4 conditions. It has about 6-8 buds here. Although it does set pods here they do not mature so under my conditions it has been pod-sterile. It produces some poly blooms in some years but in other years the blooms can be nearly all normal. I have been disappointed with it.

admmad said:I have grown 'Give Me Eight' for about 8 years and it is hardy in my zone 4 conditions. It has about 6-8 buds here. Although it does set pods here they do not mature so under my conditions it has been pod-sterile. It produces some poly blooms in some years but in other years the blooms can be nearly all normal. I have been disappointed with it.

Maurice, I was unable to set pods on mine, too. Since this was a first-year plant for me, I was giving it the benefit of the doubt and was going to see if it set pods next year. Out of all of the daylilies I've purchased and planted in my garden this year (70-ish?), it's one of only a couple that didn't set a single pod. From what you've said, though, I'm not as optimistic about it setting pods next year.

I have owned these for about 5 years. I may want to move it to a better spot to see better bloom as it is a little crowded right now. Usually Polys but after dividing it most blooms were regular singles.

DogsNDaylilies said:From what you've said, though, I'm not as optimistic about it setting pods next year.

I did a quick analysis of the registered diploid offspring from 'Give Me Eight'. The total was 26. Of those two were registered as self-pollinations; four were registered with 'Give Me Eight' as the pod parent and various other pollen parents and 20 were registered with 'Give Me Eight' as the pollen parent with various other pod parents (one of those had 'Give Me Eight' as the pollen parent one generation before).

The two self-pollinations were registered by 'Give Me Eight's hybridizer but because most daylily pollinations are not done using safe techniques (natural pollinations can occur) and because most diploid daylilies are self-incompatible I am not very confident that 'Give Me Eight' pollen was successful but nevertheless the pod parent should have been 'Give Me Eight'.

In the other four registrations, although 'Give Me Eight' was listed as the first parent in the cross and therefore should be the pod parent, many registrations are done with the pollen parent listed first so I do not have much confidence that 'Give Me Eight' is pod fertile enough for me to try using it as a pod parent in the future. Nevertheless it was probably successfully used as a pod parent by its hybridizer and so should produce a few seeds if one perseveres.

admmad said:
" because most diploid daylilies are self-incompatible ..."

They are?
Wow, I didn't know that!

for that info!
It will keep me from trying a lot of impossible pollinations


Mayo

Mayo62 said: for that info!
It will keep me from trying a lot of impossible pollinations

You are welcome.
Some of the small-flowered diploid daylilies are self-compatible - those supposedly have some ancestry with H. minor, for example Stella.
Tetraploid daylilies tend to be self-compatible somewhat more often than the diploids - that is apparently a by-product of being converted to tetraploid for which I have not seen any explanation.

However, even when a daylily is self-compatible the offspring suffer from strong inbreeding depression. Self-pollinating the F1 to produce the F2 is a typical step in genetic analyses. Geneticists who attempted that with daylilies, such as Arisumi, gave up trying to produce F2 generations because of the two problems of self-incompatibility and strong inbreeding depression.

Arisumi wrote <<A direct and theoretically desirable method of studying segregating populations was to self the progenies obtained in Group III. These plants, however, produced little or no seed when selfed, and the few seedlings obtained from them did not survive long enough to produce flowers. I have grown a few selfed seedlings from other crosses that were as vigorous as their parents but these were exceptions rather than the typical inbred seedlings. Stout found that incompatibilities often prevent selfing and that selfed progenies are "usually so weak from loss of heterosis that they are worthless" >>

Catching up here...

'Give Me Eight' is not highly polymerous here, maybe about 25% the last year that I bothered keeping records on it, which was several years ago. (For some reason, most - almost all - registered polymerous daylilies that I have purchased do not perform here per the hybridizer % data. I suspect that some combination of climate, shade, and amount of water is the culprit.)

I do like the large flowers.

Give Me Eight isn't highly polymerous in my garden either. I love the 4-foot height and the scapes are usually sturdy, but have seen some lay over trying to reach for the sun. It should do better this year now that I've gotten rid of the crepe myrtle and cut the beautyberry back. Branching is 3 to 4-way and nicely spaced. No rust. The foliage tends to flop.



I've had it since 2014 and it has grown to a mature clump of at least 15 fans.


I like it, but if downsizing continues, it may be one to go.