Nick Chase Intros

My work with daylilies -

I hybridize in four main areas, which can overlap: (1) Creating "natural" tetraploids; that is, no irradiation, colchicine or other induced tetraploidy in their ancestry; (2) bringing back rhizomatous daylilies; (3) creating taller - 30" tall, minimum - large-flowered plants whose blooms have edges or unusual shapes or patterns, mostly tets but some dips, which actually LIKE growing in Zone 4; (4) bluish.

I raise my daylilies under very adverse conditions. The seeds are planted about 1/2 inch apart in rows in a raised seedling bed, in poor soil with a little compost,  and they remain untouched, getting only weeding and water, until they bloom two or three years later. The seedlings I keep for evaluation are transplanted into poor soil with a little compost and mulch, and that's all the feeding they get for the rest of their lives. If I'm in a good mood I water them during droughts. I am not responsible for what happens to my introductions if people actually water and fertilize them and otherwise take good care of them.

LULLABY OF GUNS (Chase, N. '99)

ULTRA CHARM X OBSESSION

A late-season dormant tetraploid, 24" high, 6" bloom

Light pink and gold blend with gold wire edge above avocado throat. Begins blooming in early August (in Zone 5) most years, and extends almost to September. The name may seem a bit unusual; it is after a book of the same title written by Arthur J. ("Jack") Kirschstein, which details his family's escape from eastern Europe during the war between Poland and Bolshevist Russia that wore on for a few years after the WWI Armistice was signed in 1918. (You didn't know there was such a war? Better read the book.) 

$35 DF

IMPLAUSIBILITY  (Chase, N.'97)

 H. fulva 'Europa' (triploid species) x ED MURRAY.

Midseason dormant tetraploid, 38" high (as registered, will be 4 feet tall when established), 5" bloom

Fire-engine red with a darker red halo and gold to green throat. Parentage:  A landmark daylily, because it is the first registered tetraploid to be created "naturally", entirely from triploid and diploid breeding. (No tets, radiation, colchicine or other chromosome-doubling techniques were used. Pollen parent ED MURRAY has an aberrent chromosome which causes its pollen to produce unreduced gametes.) Very hardy, grows like a weed, even when not watered or fertilized. (Caution! It might completely take over your garden if you pamper it like a Southern-bred pretty-face daylily.) Colorfast in the sun; really stands out in the garden with its bright red color, even though the blooms and growth habit are like the triploid species. Not rhizomatous, though the rhizome genes are present for hybridizing. Also carries the unreduced-gamete-pollen trait of pollen parent ED MURRAY, and will set viable tet seeds on some diploids.

$75

BOBBIE CHASE (Chase, N. '97)

(SHA NA NA X KATE CARPENTER).

Midseason dormant tetraploid,
40" high, 6-1/4" bloom, 

A really tall "cream polychrome" with peach, pink and gold highlights, ivory midribs which become light pink as the day progresses, a light avocado-green throat which becomes lemon as the day progresses, and lemon-ruffled petal edges. When the plant is kept watered, a somewhat shorter rebloom scape comes up about a week after the main scape, so this gives a long season of summer bloom. The flower opens up early in the morning, about 3:30 AM for those of you who are up early enough to see it, and remains open until after midnight. It consistently opens well on cold mornings.  Slow to increase; perfectly hardy in Zone 5, but maybe not happy in Zone 5 - it would rather be growing in the South.

$35 DF

ZINTA (Chase, N. '05)

(2005) Late-midseason dormant tetraploid, 35" high, 6-1/4" bloom, light rose-pink blend with wire ivory-lemon edge on both petals and sepals; pink midribs, light lime-green throat. Fragrant; really noticeable fragrance in a clump, very pleasant. Three-way branching, 14+ buds (don't want a lot of buds with such a large flower). Perfectly hardy in Zone 5, not tested further north. Will take awhile to clump up, but really spectacular when it does. Parentage: WEATHERLY x BEST KEPT SECRET.

$35 DF

KATHY LUDT (Chase, N. '03)

WEATHERLY x BEST KEPT SECRET

Midseason dormant tetraploid, 37" tall (another tall one!), 6-1/4 inch bloom

Flamingo-pink blooms (darker near edges) with lighter midribs, wire gold edge, sepals have wide white edge, gold-to-green throat.

$35 DF

(photo after a hot sunny day)

MARY BIANCHI (Chase, N. '99)

WEATHERLY X BEST KEPT SECRET

Midseason dormant tetraploid, 36" tall, 6-1/2" bloom

Medium rose-shaded pink with bright pink midribs, gold band above green throat, copper-gold wire edge. Fragrant. Three-way branching, but only 16 to 20 buds (which is OK for such a large flower). Big and vigorous plant in Zone 5.

$35 DF

PREVIOUS NICK  CHASE   INTRODUCTIONS

PORCUPINE (Chase, N.'98)
introduced by Melanie Mason

seedling LL92-03 x FAIRY TALE PINK

Midseason dormant diploid, 36" high, 5-1/2" bloom

Light lavender-pink with very faint orchid halo above light lemon throat. Sepals quill most of the time (crispate-cascade form). When well grown, 3-way branching with 20 to 24 buds. Very hardy.

$35 DF

ESTHER GELADE (Chase, N. '99)
introduced by Melanie Mason

seedling LL92-03 x FAIRY TALE PINK.

Late-midseason dormant diploid, 30" tall, 7" bloom

Esther Gelade has an unusually (for a diploid) large 7" flower.  Light lavender pink with a light rose halo, gold-to-green throat, veining on petals. Bud count of 22; some fragrance; blooms for 6 weeks (well into August in Zone 5).

$35 DF

WEATHERLY (Chase, N.'96)
introduced by Ron Valente

{[SDLG x (EARTH ANGEL x DANCE BALLERINA DANCE)] X [SDLG x (LAHAINA x YUMA)]}

Midseason dormant tetraploid, 30" high, 5-1/2" bloom.

Salmon-pink blend with gold edge and gold-banded olive-green throat. One of the first northern-hardy gold-edged "pink" daylilies. Perfectly hardy in Zone 5, but struggles in Zone 4. Does need some care to thrive, like, maybe, a little watering once in awhile. Transmits that bubbly gold edge to its children very well; gives a wire gold edge even when crossed with daylilies which do not have contrasting edges. Long bloom season. Named in honor of the Weatherly (PA) Area Community Library.

$45 DF

MY   GARDEN

The raised, brick-walled seedling bed, into which several hundred seedlings per year (for 3 or four years running) are crammed:

At one time, beginning in the early 1990s, I grew more than 1300 cultivars in beds located throughout the yard. Over the years, due to a lack of time to weed in the garden, little tree saplings and shrubs and brambles and vines grew into the daylily beds. Then they grew into BIG trees and shrubs and briarpatches and enormous strangling things, and took over the whole yard. After I retired I made a little headway into this mess, but not much. This past summer, 2007, my wife said, enough! So we borrowed against my pension and had a land-destruction.... er, sorry, I mean a landscaping.... crew come in and strip away all of that stuff. The last week of work included a Bobcat, sort of a small bulldozer, which flattened just about everything when it was being used to pull out tree stumps, including squashing what remained of my daylily beds. I was left with a yard of rutted dust about a half-foot deep (it was very dry in the late summer of 2007):

What you see in this picture  WAS a daylily bed. (Note pieces of tree trunks imbedded in the neighbor's chain-link fence.)

During the late summer and fall I tediously de-rooted, smoothed, watered and seeded the yard, small chunks at a time, and laid out entirely new daylily beds (which can be easily mowed around), incorporating the Bobcat-squashed beds where possible. As I worked, in the dust I would find little daylily shoots from long-ago-planted clumps, struggling toward the sun. When I dug down to rescue a "clump" (sometimes only a single small fan with a few roots attached, because it had been in deep shade for a decade), if I was lucky I would also locate the plant label which I had planted with the clump. I would take the poor thing to the new daylily bed, spade and clean the next 2 feet of the new bed, then plant and water the rescued clump.

By the end of November 2007, as you can see in this picture , I had seeded about two-thirds of the massacred part of the yard into new lawn and had transplanted several hundred rescued daylily plants. I even mulched all of the replanted daylily beds and put temporary labels on every cultivar I was able to identify (about two-thirds of them). That's about as much care and attention as I've ever given to my daylilies. (Mulch? What a luxury!)

 Will these transplants survive the winter? Well, If I couldn't kill them with a decade of neglect, they probably will. In the summer of 2008 I will see a fifteen-year-old daylily garden come back to life, I'm psyched.