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.
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.
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.
Every year old Pa Pitt gives you pictures of these daylilies, because every year they are the earliest to bloom. They came from an unnamed hybrid seedling, so it is very likely that this exact variety exists nowhere else on earth. Raindrops add a decorative effect to the pictures.
Yes, since you ask, Father Pitt did plant tulips right in front of this patch of daylilies so he could take these pictures proving that these daylilies do really bloom as early as the end of tulip season. The pictures were taken on May 13, and old Pa Pitt does not know of any other daylilies blooming that early in the city. The variety has no name, since it came from a batch of mixed unnamed hybrid seedlings.