Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Arterial Blood (Huben 11)


44 M 3.5, Red Self, Dor Dip
Sobek 90.34A=(City Of Sin * Pardon Me) * Red Spire
Seedling number: MH0377C

Here is my first tall-and-small red, and it is glorious.  Brilliant, velvety, saturated, flaming lipstick-red flowers with green throats held far above the foliage like embers rising from a fire.  Oh, there have been other tall-and-small reds, but they are mostly dull in comparison.

Red clarity in daylilies has many enemies: sun, thrips, and dull color.  Arterial Blood is more sunfast than most (though it will slick on particularly bad days and recover in the evening.)  I reject most reds from my garden because they are less sunfast.  But its particular strength is in thrips resistance: resisting those winding trails that blemish the petals of so many purples and reds.  In my unsprayed garden, Arterial Blood seldom shows any markings.  Dull red color is another bane in my garden: I despise it.  Often it is due to a yellow throat and base color underlying a weak red.  Arterial Blood's rich, deep coloring over a pale base color and green throat make this one of the more brilliant flowers in the garden.

Arterial Blood's height, branching and budding comes from the excellent Red Spire.  Branching and budcount are extraordinary (at least 27 buds and 5 branches.)  I pollinate every bloom because this one has proven to be the most vigorous and rhyzomatious of the Red Spire kids to date. Red Spire itself increases slowly and doesn't do all that well in my poor conditions, but Arterial Blood greatly outperforms it.

The children of Arterial Blood are quite diverse, but some are showing excellent clarity, sunfastness, height, branching, budcount, thrip resistance, color saturation, and rhyzomatiousness.  Colors vary from reds to red-purples to black-reds.  See MH0875B and MH0873D for examples.

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