With us having an elnino winter, our weather is mild with a lot of rain. Today i saw that all my dormants have new spring growth! We had a week of below freezing temps in the evenings in early december now they think its spring already. They were only dormant for about a month and a half. I guess I will have to protect them with mulch before we get our one week of winter here.

We've had a lot of rain here in Georgia as well. The temps have dropped below freezing for a few nights, and today it's back in the sixties. We normally never get freezing temps in December. I'm afraid I might loose some to rot with all of the rain and up and down temps.

So far 'Magnificent Rainbow' is the only dormant I have that has totally disappeared, so I am hoping it is just dormant and not dead.

Seedfork said:So far 'Magnificent Rainbow' is the only dormant I have that has totally disappeared, so I am hoping it is just dormant and not dead.

Are the ones that have not disappeared actively growing?

I'll make a list and check it twice, tomorrow. As warm as the weather has been over the past few days I would not be surprised to find at least some of them are actively growing. I have been so busy hauling in leaves and pine straw I have not been as attentive to the plants as I should be. I will say if any of my seedlings are actively growing it is barely noticeable, I thought they would be much larger by now.

Got caught up doing other things, but today I updated my dormants list, I now have 56. I did not get a chance to check all of them but I did check a lot of them. Only a couple seemed to be actively growing( very small amount of growth), but none of the ones I checked today were totally not visible, so still only 'Magnificent Rainbow' is by itself in that category.
I did find many dormants that I could not actually tell form many evergreens and semi evergreens without consulting the list. Of course that is normally the case here is my garden. I did discover an aphid invasion, so I pulled the dead foliage and much of the green foliage trying to thin it out so when I spray it will actually reach the insects. It started raining so I was not able to finish, maybe over the weekend I will be able to actually spray.

Since dormancy (in the correct sense of the word - temporarily not growing) does not require the foliage to die, your ones that are still green but not actually growing are dormant. It may be that if there is a freeze their foliage would be killed back and then they'd look more like we expect of "dormants". I've wondered, probably here at some point, whether some daylilies get registered evergreen because they are green even though they are actually technically dormant (not growing) in winter.

One week of winter
So far the temps around here lately has been at or above normal. I believe it was 48f yesterday. Most of mine are gone to sleep. Some foliage is showing a little green.

Pat236 said:We've had a lot of rain here in Georgia as well. The temps have dropped below freezing for a few nights, and today it's back in the sixties. We normally never get freezing temps in December. I'm afraid I might loose some to rot with all of the rain and up and down temps.

My peach tree bloomed in November because of our crazy Georgia weather! My camellia dropped all it's blooms again this year because of the heavy rains. I had high hopes this year since it had gotten over it's transplant shock finally. Oh well, skunked again!

@Rosebaby, Georgia peaches would be nice in November . Mother Nature has tricks up her sleeve...she confused my azaleas and I got a few blooms in early December. I don't know what to expect this spring. I planted quite a few this fall and I hope they make it.

Has anyone direct seeded their seeds in the ground under these weather conditions? We also had winter early here in North Carolina... a week of snowmageddon with 12 inches of snow followed by ice followed by 70 degrees and rain. My seedcrop was so dismal last summer, I thought about just planting in the ground in late December. But now, I don't know if that would be a bad decision....might they germinate too soon? I know people in zone 4 and 5 and maybe zone 6 can direct seed after Thanksgiving, but what about zone 7?

If they get chilled (between 32 and 50F) for long enough and then it gets warm enough for long enough then they may germinate. If you don't usually see seed dormancy (erratic prolonged germination) they may germinate in a warm spell regardless. So I guess the answer is it depends on the unpredictable weather.

I would go ahead and plant a few surplus seeds this year and see how they react and plan on maybe expanding the project if it were successful, and of course never doing it ever again if they all died.

Speaking of dormant. Recently found this article by Mr John Benz renowned hybridizer.
http://benzgardens.com/styled-...

I would have a few quibbles with the article, for example the only daylily actually scientically shown to have "anti-freeze" is Hemerocallis fulva, which does not have blue-green leaves. That doesn't mean that others don't but it does mean that it isn't just a "blue-green" thing.

However, the last paragraph is incorrect, although a common misconception.. A deciduous plant has all the leaves die annually at one time, they don't necessarily have to fall off at that time for the plant to be considered deciduous. Consider oaks and beeches, which keep the dead leaves during winter until they fall, often lasting into spring. The word "dormant" means not growing, it does not mean dying leaves. A plant does not have to have its leaves die to be dormant. If you look around now you will see evergreen plants like conifers and rhododendrons that are dormant but still with green living leaves, and you will see "marcescent" plants that are deciduous but don't drop the dead leaves immediately, like this ninebark:



Yes when daylily leaves have died back and are not growing the plant is dormant, but then so are the evergreens and sevs where it is cold enough to stop growth. Deciduous actually better differentiates the plant behaviour, and "dormant" is not a foliage habit. Deciduous is what indicates that the leaves die every fall.

Edited to correct typo and clarity and add this picture of a dormant spruce tree taken today:

Hazelcrestmikeb said:Speaking of dormant.

I have many comments that I could make about the opinions in the article. However, the most important comment I will make applies to all information that is daylily related. Information that can be relied on needs to be objective and supported by factual data. Typically that means published scientific information; biological information about daylilies that can be relied on definitely needs objective sources.

I will provide just one example and that concerns "antifreeze" in daylilies in relation to cold hardiness. The following quote is from a review by a researcher who specializes in cold hardiness research in plants,
"freezing resistance in plants has little to do with antifreeze solutes",

Mike

I enjoyed the Benz article and feel a bit annoyed when members of the science committee feel the need to chastise a noted northern hybridizer for having used the jargon of northern hybridizers.

The jargon is well accepted....there are various states of dormancy so the point was missed in an effort to malign someone who is well respected who is not a member of this forum and is not here to defend himself.

The term "anti-freeze" is a more recent term that everyone knows is something different....as with the term "pony sized" or "popcorn" doubles....they are something different as well. Northern hybridizers have long recognized there is a difference in foliage habit in describing "dormant" daylilies. Some that completely die back going into winter have a "resting bud" above ground that remains greenish and others have their resting bud below ground. The term "hard dormant" has been used (again in jargon) to describe these below ground resting buds. Northern hybridizers LOVE this type of dormancy because these are the ones that come up later in the spring.....so late that sometimes you wonder if they are dead because absolutely nothing shows above ground. I like the "hard dormants" for my zone 7, too, because they miss the spring freeze/thaw cycles. When they do come up, they often display that beautiful blue green foliage that seems thicker and more resilient to freezes....and that is how the term "anti-freeze" came about....even though everyone knows that is something that people put in cars. I do not have to be "Published" in order to observe plant habit IMHO

I started reading this thread, Larry, because those dormant plant habits where there is a resting bud above ground DO respond and start growing sooner than the resting buds below ground. Some seem to lack the "anti-freeze" factor, too, so if they start growing too soon, the foliage may be nipped by severely cold spring temperatures that dip into the lower 20s. So it is something that should concern people in zone 6, 7, and 8 when we have abnormally high winter temperatures.

Maurice,
Appreciate you giving your opinion , and I could not agree more with the statements: "However, the most important comment I will make applies to all information that is daylily related. Information that can be relied on needs to be objective and supported by factual data. Typically that means published scientific information; biological information about daylilies that can be relied on definitely needs objective sources."
If I had read the "Random Thoughts" article by John Benz with out knowing any of the history of the debate over changing the "dormancy" term to "deciduous" I would not have expected such a reply or been skeptical of every statement made in the Benz article as I read it.
Still, I loved reading the article and love people putting out information they truely believe is correct, only by putting such info out in print can it be criticized, debated and corrected if necessary.
My main question as I read the article (being his objection to using the term "deciduous" seem to rest on this statement) is it true that:
"The most basic and absolute requirement for a plant to be listed as deciduous is that such plants must shed or drop their leaves every fall."?
So I wondered if the entire debate over the use of the term "Deciduous" could have been based on a non agreement over the actual definition of the word (not likely)?
Of course I think we all can agree that published scientific information is not always free of bias, but at least it is put out there for debate and conformation .
So I looked for the definition using the highly scientific tool "Google". Well, I was surprised to find an article that seems to suggest the definition of the term is not fully agreed on.
"So far as I can determine, the terms persistent and deciduous lack clear definitions — certainly not in terms capable of intersubjective application. And it would seem that they are not understood in a consistent manner among botanists."
http://w3.biosci.utexas.edu/pr...
Now my main point here is that the lay person like myself, without the necessary training needed to understand the science often being discussed find it very hard at times to figure out just what is bias and what is fact. Facts so often ends up changing.
Now I have to go look for what are the things that contribute to freeze resistant ?
I started writing this article before Davi wrote her post, I love it also. I was trying to come up with a term but did not...she did "well accepted jargon."
I was trying to find a way to say I can also appreciate scientific studies and articles written with "well accepted jargon", they are both subject to debate in my opinion.

Davi, the part I primarily commented on was "A totally erroneous notion being currently postulated is that we should replace the term DORMANT with the absurd and non-applicable term DECIDUOUS! The most basic and absolute requirement for a plant to be listed as deciduous is that such plants must shed or drop their leaves every fall. Dormant daylilies die back, but the leaves remain attached at the base of the plant all winter until they are manually removed in the spring or just decompose. Read my lips: There is no such thing as a deciduous daylily! "If it ain't broke, don't fix it"

So what you are saying is that it is OK for the scientific committee to be criticized on a public web site but not OK for anyone to post an explanation of why deciduous is actually the correct term and is not "erroneous" "absurd" or "non-applicable"?

BTW nobody said that plant anti-freeze proteins aren't a thing. As I said, they have been identified in Hemerocallis fulva. What is not settled in science is exactly what is involved in plant hardiness, which is actually very complicated and involves more factors than antifreeze.

Edited to add references for scientific articles about plant antifreeze (it is not a daylily people invention). There is still research going on so some some of these are out of date:
https://scholar.google.ca/scho...

"So I wondered if the entire debate over the use of the term "Deciduous" could have been based on a non agreement over the actual definition of the word (not likely)?"

If you look in any reference for antonyms to evergreen you will find that the opposite word is deciduous. Dormant means not growing, and the opposite of that is growing, not evergreen. The problem with deciduous is that so many general references give trees that drop their leaves in fall as an example. That doesn't mean it's the only definition, just an example. Basically a deciduous plant has all its leaves die at once every year, whether they fall off immediately or not as explained in my earlier post (look up marcescence in oak and beech).