Story by Jess Bellack
Photos courtesy of Melanie Mason

Melanie Mason, of North Country Daylilies in Saratoga, New York, got started in the hybridization of new daylily species 16 years ago. Her first lily was sold in 1998 and she has since registered around 50. “I had a landscaping business and found daylilies to be the one perennial I could plant in anyone’s garden year after year and still bloom, despite the worst black-thumbed gardener,” Mason explains. To her, they are the “foolproof” perennial.

“I had a landscaping business and found daylilies to be the one perennial I could plant in anyone’s garden year after year and still bloom, despite the worst black-thumbed gardener,” Mason explains.

Hybridization is the act of crossing two different plants of the same genus to create a new variety. Daylilies are easily hybridized. It involves removing the anther from one flower and dusting the pollen onto the pistil of another flower. “The seeds need to have a chilling period, so I store mine in the refrigerator in the winter,” Melanie says. “I plant them indoors in early February and they are ready to be planted outside in June, when the ground has warmed up.”

Flower parts 101

They will not bloom that first summer, but most will bloom the following year. Melanie lets them bloom twice until she makes her selections. “A good generality is that you get one keeper for every 250 seedlings. I rarely have more than five to ten new introductions each year.” She usually plants somewhere between 2,500 to 5,000 seeds annually.

Mason, who has degrees in ornamental horticulture and art, admits that the “coolest” thing about daylilies is their variety. “Marigolds all pretty much look the same. Sunflowers can be tall or short, but are all in shades of yellow, orange, and bronze,” Melanie says. “Daylilies can come in colors from white to almost black, very dark red or purple.” They can have two or three colors in their flowers and their throats can range from lime green to gold.

“Daylilies can come in colors from white to almost black, very dark red or purple,” Mason says.

Other than variations in color, daylilies also range in size from two inches to a foot in diameter. They can be as short as 12 inches or as tall as six feet. Melanie carries daylilies with very thin petals (called spiders), big fluffy ones, quilled or curled ones (called unusual forms), and poly petals that have eight to ten segments, rather than the usual six. Blooming dates can also vary by months. One might start blooming in June and another one might not bloom until August.

Melanie does both catalog orders and walk-in sales all over the United States and Canada. “About sixty percent of my business is catalog order, either through my mailed catalog or through my website. Daylilies are so forgiving that they barely miss a beat in the postal system,” she says.

Melanie explains that daylilies have a “blue book” value based on supply and demand. “When a new daylily enters the market, supply is very short—perhaps only ten plants. As a result, new hybrids are costly, ranging from $50 to $250,” she explains. As these plants multiply, prices drop to five dollars. “You will find lots of daylilies in the $6 to $10 range, many in the $15 to $50 range, and a few in the $100 to $125 range,” she explains.

Another daylily from Melanie's garden

The busiest time for Melanie is shipping season— mid-April through the end of May. Daylilies have to be dug up, washed, trimmed, packaged, and then hauled to the post office so they arrive when the customer wants them. The plants are shipped regardless of the weather.

In the summer, Melanie hybridizes the flowers, evaluates the seedlings, handles the new purchases, weeds the garden, sells to her walk-in customers, and throws tennis balls for her yellow lab.

“Most people associate daylilies with the roadside “ditch” lily, but through hybridizing, the daylily has come a long way,” Melanie says.

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The only complicated factor in the hybridization process is that some daylilies have been genetically modified to have double the number of chromosomes. These are called tetroploids. The original daylily hybrids are diploids. Hybridizers throughout the world are working with both tetroploids and diploids, so neither is considered to be more advanced than the other. However, when making a cross you have to make sure that “mom” and “dad” are of the same ploidity. If you use one of each, no seeds will result.

Definitions:

Petal- brightly colored elements that attract pollinators

Pistil- female reproductive structure consisting of the stigma, style, and ovary

Stigma- sticky substance at the tip of the style where pollen grains attach

Style- part of pistil that separates the stigma and ovary

Ovary- protects ovule and becomes the fruit after fertilization

Ovule- becomes the seed when fertilization takes place

Stamen- male reproductive structure consisting of the anther and filament

Anther- collects pollen sacs

Filament- stalk of the anther