Little did I know when I registered this beautiful Howard Hite daylily that it would be so controversial. I was almost afraid to ask Howard for permission to register it because he was quite old and was wheelchair bound....and was quite cranky because he could no longer get down the hill to direct his daughter's hybridizing!!! And Gloria had warned me that Howard thought those daylilies that threw extra petals were "freaks". So I approached Howard with 3 blooms....one regular, one bloom with an extra sepal (which OSTERIZED does sometimes), and one 4 x 4 poly bloom making sure Howard smelled each bloom while I explained why I thought it should be registered. (10" tet unusual forms were pretty scarce back then, too....this was in 1999!) OSTERIZED is wonderfully fragrant. And then I waited a looooong anxious wait while Howard rolled all that information around and studied each bloom expecting him to yell at me at any moment. But he broke out into a HUGE grin with an enthusiastic "Ohhhhhhhh, I LIKE that" and graciously signed the registration papers. Exactly one year later, OSTERIZED took best in show at the Southern Michigan Daylily Club and Gloria drove home to get Howard and wheeled him into the show to show him "his" flower on the head table. It is, by far, my finest moment as a person who registers daylilies for others to enjoy. Howard passed away shortly after that knowing his program would go on. I hope someone cares enough about my work to "carry on" when I'm at that stage.
It was difficult registering OSTERIZED because the amount it polys is so variable. Almost all the poly blooms come all at once in the 2nd half of its bloom cycle. And it is the poly blooms that are the most fertile. The 5 x 5 poly blooms give enormous 5 celled seed pods that look like pumpkins! At the time, there were no (ZERO-NONE!) tetraploid polytepals (the term being used then) so nobody could give me guidance on whether to count those blooms with the extra sepal. The parent, GREEN DOLPHIN STREET, also throws that 7th segment. Since breeding for polymerous daylilies was in its infancy, it was recommended that you register ANY poly with their percentages....even if it were just 10 percent.....so that ones with low percentages could be identified by hybridizers interested in developing this "new" form. (This is not the current recommendation since polymerous daylilies must now be shown in the doubles class at shows....and I still get hate mail for having registered several with truthful stats)
I registered OSTERIZED at 50% which was the AVERAGE amount that it polyed in my Michigan, zone 5 garden. It polyed more than that clumped up with lots of water or rain, less than that in hot dry years and as line outs. (It's an unusual form 100% of the time so I personally think it should be shown in the UF section of exhibition shows). Show rules evolve over time, so I will not be going back to change the registration to accommodate people wanting to show it.....as the registration is correct reflecting how it grew in my garden. OSTERIZED took best in show in a Florida show before the rules changed, too...shown as a UF.
OSTERIZED will grow from Florida to Canada! But with that being said, I will confirm that the plant habit deteriorates in hot climates. I was horrified when I saw OSTERIZED in Dan Trimmer's and Pat Stamile's gardens.....the foliage was narrower and the scapes had lost some of their branching....and I understand it is an evergreen in Florida. It was a semi-evergreen in Michigan. It was looking closer to "normal" in a Florida garden where it was growing in mostly shade and was getting lots of water. It takes quite a long time to deteriorate in hot climates. I no longer grow OSTERIZED since I've moved to North Carolina, zone 7. It became a fraction of what it was in zone 5 and was clearly not happy here so I sent all that I had left back to Gloria Hite's Michigan garden. I miss growing it and will probably buy another plant from a northern garden and plant it in part shade here....it took about 10 years before it started looking sad. It's much better branched and performs better where it gets LOTS of winter.
I still grow a lot of OSTERIZED seedlings just for their fragrance and my own enjoyment. I never intended to register one of them until my daughter in law insisted I name a daylily for my grandkitty, so now we have MISTER BUTTERS, which grows better than OSTERIZED here. It has also won an honorable mention and was voted "best clump" during the Region 15 tour a few years ago.
OSTERIZED is what it is....and grows differently under different conditions. So thank you Mr. Polymerous for your very fair and accurate assessment of how it grows for you. Glad you like it so much. I think it was a pretty ground breaking daylily that pointed the way to new directions in both polys and unusual forms and I'll always have a special place in my heart for the person who hybridized it....Howard Hite!!
