Creating modern hardy hybrid daylillies...
especially for gardens in northern zones!

Daylily: Psychodrama

Unfortunately, this flower just doesn’t photograph well. The camera just doesn’t pick up the look of the eye in person… a VERY deep, lustrous purple (with just a hit of red for highlights)… which sparkles from a distance, and is TRULY rich and mesmerizing. You can get a hint of it in the full-sun photos, but lose the effect of the “whole picture” at the same time. Photography can be a mean business, though with luck, you’ll at least be able to see what this plant DOES!!!

I talk a lot about “performance”… and am especially fond of it, when found on GIANT plants. Dormant plant habit? A BIG plus for me, as I’ve never veered from my initial goal of “northern hardiness” when starting to hybridize daylilies in the mid-90's. I’ve found better luck with dormants in that regard… and personally, I simply LOVE the way they emerge so cleanly in the Spring. Rapid rebloom? A MUST for northern gardeners, if they expect to actually see rebloom in the shorter Summer season of zones 4-5. Getting ALL my career-long (yes, this is my only job) goals into a single plant? PERFECT, and more rare than I’ll ever admit to anyone not familiar with breeding plants. With all this in mind…

PLEASE click on/blow up and LOOK at the photo of the scape habit. I’ve done my best to show how this plant performed as a 3-year-old seedling “clump” of just 3 fans in it. Such an enormous “thing”, there was no way to fit “all that” into a photo with my hand in it (as I normally do)… so had to resort to text and arrows. There’s 3 scapes that are the initial bloom there, that all have deep lateral branches. Through breeding, it’s been possible to get laterals to branch (bifurcate into 2 terminal whorls of buds) themselves… meaning substantial extra buds/blooms. Much newer development, is getting those branches to bifurcate yet again – which this plant indeed does quite often, producing a total of 4 terminal whorls for each lateral branch. If that's not enough... in addition, 2 branches often emerge from a single side leaf node. I've seen all this in a few other plants I've done (not just my "Giants", but a long list of others now), but it's indeed not very common in the larger world of daylilies. Long story short, THIS plant (of over 250 that I’ve introduced over the years) may indeed be the best performer I’ve done yet... based on ALL its attributes. “Rapid/Instant rebloom” for the northern gardener? Well… the initial scapes have just started blooming in that same photo, and you can clearly see all 3 mature fans have not only put up what would be considered “amazing” scapes already… but have rebloom scapes well on their VERY merry way to the left, to make sure the show doesn’t stop – for weeks on end.

NO amount of money would ever be enough for what I think is the most amazing daylily in my garden, especially considering the cost of what I’ve been through to get it myself. That's true for a lot of the kids... but truth is here, I’ve not many of these available… so beyond the outrageous distinction of it, there’s a genuine “supply issue” goin’ on as well. I sold out of this one within 2 days after introduction, and having only kept a few for propagation, very little available again... for a while.

Collector, hybridizer, or simply wanting a truly “slightly different” daylily (and for ALL the right reasons)… THIS is “it”, folks!!! Incidentally... the name was born of my own interpretation of crazy daylily people, who'll display some very unusual mental and physical contortions... when seeing an AMAZING new daylily (of which I'm one of!)! Indeed... YOU know who you are. ;-)

2022: Extremely limited