home | bio | paintings | artist's statements | daylilies | hybridizer's statement | contact
Breeding for Black and Brown Daylilies
One of my best black seedlings
to date: APOPHIS, Mahieu-Burris '07 is leathery, with a raised corduroy
texture,
weather proof and sun resistant. A super extended bloomer
when
the blooms open they are absolutely black. The best thing
about
this cultivar is that it is a blue or purple black, which to my mind
more of a true black. In painter's pigments black is a low
chroma, low value blue, not a low value red. Most "black"
daylilies of the past have been dark reds.
 I have been breeding for black and brown daylilies since 1995, and feel that I have made good progress in general, and some real breakthroughs in certain areas-- especially with black daylilies. When I started breeding for brown daylilies lots of people thought I was crazy and could not understand the fascination. Oscie Whatley commented to me on the difficulty of getting "rich" browns and that has been my focus. I believe that breeding a sunfast brown is just as difficult as breeding a really saturated, sunfast purple. The reason for this is that brown daylilies are a combination of fulvous orange pigments with purple and blue pigments (actually I think that just about every daylily pigment is in there). The purples (anthocyanin- based hues) have a tendency to be temperature sensitive, and if they are, the purple of a brown bloom may fade leaving a coppery red or orange. This nice coppery brown bloom with a black eye is sun proof. I have every shade of brown seedling from tan with lavender eyes through copper and taupe shades to dark bronze and finally near black. As I have finally stabilized the color and patterns and other plant characteristics I am working now on fine tuning the form. |
 I have achieved some very rich, velvety -- even almost iridescent browns. The iridescent quality is due to all the different spectral hues being in the floral segments (contrasting purples, blues, oranges, reds). The triumph of my breeding for browns has been to get a green throat on the browns. This is particularly difficult, as I believe that the genes for brown-ness are derived from diurnal, orange throated daylilies, from the H. fulva species. The green throats come from nocturnal lines, so blending the diurnal and nocturnal has been key. Unfortunately, so many of the brown lines "want" to have orange throats. |
 In my lines, black and brown are definitely related. The blacks are versions of the brown, with much more blue and purple pigments present, and the blacks are much more stable, not as sensitive to temperature. They will mature or fade to a dark black-purple (a value shift -- ie the degree of darkness of the hue) but it is not a hue shift as sometimes occurs in the browns -- brown to red. Many of the blacks have a super extended habit- some remaining open for 2 full days and taking a day or two to open. |
 Another key development that I have been working on is anthocyanin-based colors that are weather proof. Since the anthocyanin pigments (responsible mostly for purple and red colors) are water based, often flowers in those shades will water spot or run when they get wet. From the inception of my program I began selecting flowers that seemed to have a waxy coating on the floral segments and resisted water damage. The bloom shown here was torn by the intensity of the rainfall (lower petal) but the blooms did not streak or run. This trait of being weather proof is critical when breeding for dark colors on which a huge drip of water erased pigment is very unsightly. My black lines of breeding are exceptionally water proof, and this this waxy quality is very attractive and practical in the garden. |
| Pit Of Despair is one of the first
registrations out of my black/brown lines
PIT OF DESPAIR Mahieu 2004 Diploid 00-216-J [(reuther's brown spider x Lambert seedling D-86-8C) X (SATCH MO x BLUE VENTURE)] 47 M Re 7 SEV NOC EXT 4-way branching 26 buds (Lambert seedling D-86-8C looks like a 10 inch version of DIABOLIQUE, though with different parentage.) This large flower displays some crispation with all segments either pinching or twisting slightly, but I did not register it as an Unusual Form. The substance is extremely heavy and wax like with ridges/sculpting coming out of the lime starburst throat edged with a lacquered violet-red zone. Base color is deep cordovan-brown overlaid with purple-black. The entire eyezone has a velvety BLACK-blue halo, weatherproof and sunfast. Outstanding flower! Fertile both ways. |
Bluegrass Gardens will introduce
the best of my blacks and browns probably beginning in the fall of 2007
 |
Hybridizing Thoughts: