I saw on the AHS Robin this morning that it was posted yesterday that Charles Applegate passed away July 5.
Charles introduced 45 daylilies. He was a stickler for good plant habit. He especially enjoyed working with pink diploids, and with doubles.
Charles was one of the friendliest, most generous people I have ever met in daylilies. He was a senior gardener at Kingwood Garden here in Ohio for many, many years, and was very active in the Ohio Daylily Society.
When I first became interested in daylilies, I bought plants from Dottie Warrell for a few years, and as my interest grew, I decided to attend a daylily meeting, and went to Kingwood Center to an Ohio club meeting. My elderly Mom went with me, and Charles came over to us right away, made us feel so welcome. Struck up conversation with my mom about her home town of Perrysville, which was his home town also. It's about as big as a postage stamp, so not many people are from there. He invited us to come to his garden, and the next year during bloom, I made arrangements to do that. It was there that I began to appreciate hosta - he had the prettiest beds of hosta back in behind his home under some trees.
Two of his cultivars were favorites of mine for many, many years. I'd still be growing them now, if I was able to take care of more bed area, that's for sure. Blessing and Guile are still distinctive after all these years. One of his seedlings was not named, and I still have a piece of it. It doesn't have high bud count, or fantastic scapes... I kept it because of it's unusual color. He just called it the "rose spider" but it's not really rose - and it's not a spider. I don't know what color to call it. But I love it.
Another plant he encouraged me to use in hybridizing was Punk. He chipped a piece off the side of his small clump, and it barely had any root or crown, but he thought it would make it. It did - and I've had the most unusual seedlings from it. He told me at the time that Punk was a sib to Pardon Me. Punk has fabulous scapes and is dusty purple. I wonder what he ever got from it.
I remember Charles telling me how he planted his seed. He put them in soil in old coffee cans, sunk into the ground, one cross per can. Put the seed in there in the fall, let them germinate over winter. Then when they were up several inches the next year, pulled the cans from the soil, separated them and lined them out.
Charles --- thanks for being so kind and encouraging to me. Daylilies lost a kind and gentle soul yesterday and you will be missed.
Charles Obiturary
http://www.byerly-lindsey.com/...
Blessing
Guile (sorry photo was taken in 2000--- digital cameras were not very good then!)
The "rose spider"
