Daylilies in April! Old Pa Pitt likes to claim that he has the earliest daylilies in Pittsburgh. They came from an unnamed hybrid seedling, which just happened to inherit an assortment of genes that, juggled and shaken together, made plants that bloomed at the end of tulip season.
Can you prove that you have daylilies in tulip season? you might ask. Well, for that purpose, old Pa Pitt actually planted a tulip in front of the daylily patch.
Father Pitt will not claim that this is the earliest daylily in Pittsburgh. But it blooms about this time every year, as the tulips and trilliums are fading, and when very few other daylilies are to be seen. Most daylilies bloom in June and afterward. This one was an unnamed hybrid seedling planted many years ago; it has since formed a big clump.
Yes, old Pa Pitt did plant tulips right in front of this patch of daylilies just to prove that he has daylilies that bloom in tulip season.
The variety has no name, because it came from a batch of unnamed hybrid seedlings. But every year it reliably produces the earliest daylily flowers Father Pitt knows of, and every year he takes its picture, with a tulip in the frame if possible.
Every year we bring you this early daylily, which came from an unnamed hybrid seedling. Here it is again, blooming today.
This picture is not an artistic masterpiece, but it does demonstrate the interesting fact that this daylily is blooming before the tulips have faded.
Old Pa Pitt has finally migrated away from WordPress.com to a server that places fewer restrictions on his site. (The address is still FatherPitt.com; all your links through that address should still work.) Almost all the content from the past fourteen and a half years has moved here, except (for some reason) the last two weeks’ worth of articles. Those will reappear soon. (Update: They have now been restored.) You can expect Father Pitt to be tinkering with the design of the site for a while.
Meanwhile, here are some daylilies in the rain, straight from the Olympus E-20N DSLR with no editing at all. The camera is officially old enough to buy its own alcoholic beverages this year, but it still takes pretty good pictures in glorious five-megapixel resolution.
