Gleni said:I have added new columns on my data recoding sheets for all my clumps to track the scape types and plant behaviour over winter.
OK., but daylilies can be quite unpredictable. In biological terms they would be described as having phenotypic plasticity - basically they can appear to be inconsistent. Or they can be very complicated.
Paradormancy is one characteristic that can be very complicated.
I have been growing most of my cultivars in a field. They have been quite neglected, but not completely so, for about ten years. They were not watered, not fertilized and seldom weeded. Those are approximately the conditions that daylily species face in their natural habitats and regions. I noticed that two of the cultivars were paradormant in the field. Those were 'Ophir' (O) and 'Heavenly Harmony' (HH). HH is an early bloomer for tetraploids and blooms in late June or early July here. Year after year it did not produce a single new leaf during the entire blooming season after its scape was visible in early June. Then after the scape dried and in September when its leaves started to age and yellow it would produce a few new short leaves and then the cold arrived and it would lose those leaves. Ophir blooms in mid-July here and it would usually not produce any new leaves once its scape appeared in late June. But in about one year out of three it would produce a few new leaves before it started blooming and then stop producing new leaves in mid-July. HH looked as if it was paradormant from early June always and Ophir looked as if it could be relied on to be paradormant but only from late July.
Then late one autumn I watered and ferilized HH. The next year it was not paradormant at all. It produced a scape in early June and continued to produce new leaves the entire summer. Then when those leaves finally aged and yellowed it sprouted a few short leaves which the cold then killed.
The next year I divided some of the Ophir and planted some single fans of it in a new bed. The single fans in the new bed received no extra water or fertilizer. Some untouched fans were left in the original bed. The new bed had been grass that was turned over so I would have to assume that it had some extra fertility and available nutrients. The next summer some of the single fans in the new bed bloomed. They were not paradormant. They continued to produce new leaves the entire summer. The untouched fans in the old bed were paradormant.
I have seen single clumps of one cultivar where there were fans that were paradormant and fans that were not.
It is reasonable for plants to show phenotypic plasticity - they are responding to their environment. Since they cannot get up and move to a better location they adapt and make the absolute best of the situation they find themselves in. When they are in poor conditions (no extra water, competition from other plants, no extra fertilizer) they grow the best they can but it will not be optimally or maximally. So they do not produce extra new leaves all summer - that might not be efficient or productive. However, when they have better conditions that allow them to make more growth then they do not become paradormant but grow throughout the summer.
When recording the growth characteristics of a cultivar one might have to record it separately for each fan and keep a record of the conditions (if those are likely to be different from year to year, etc).
I will be continuing my tests with Ophir this summer by giving some of the fans in the old bed extra water, weeding and fertilizer and seeing if changing the environment in the spring affects the growth/paradormancy this year (in the same year).
I do not know if there are any daylily cultivars (or species) that are consistently paradormant under all growing conditions that are reasonable in gardens (as opposed to those that are more or less natural conditions).
