Hi Mrs. G., the pure joy of seeing a new prodigy. I have an addiction, slightly albeit, to daylily’s from seed. It could get out of control if others to send me seeds!
@mamuang I took this picture so you can tell me how many plant to save for you next-year
Thanks Jay, but I’m a cheapskate when it comes to daylily plants. 20$ is pushing it. The prices on those things are amazing. I’ll look at it though. My gene pool is still slow. One I have now though which I intend to breed heavily is ‘Wesley’s Summer Sensation’. It’s probably not listed yet online but maybe it is. Came from a IL. biologist that bred it to begin blooming August thru the first Fall Freeze. Mine has scapes on it now. I divided and divided what I had for two year to get it to others and now have two plants: one with (2) fans and the other with one. Both are large scapes however.
Yeah, I think they’re up there with figs for crazy prices. He did a talk at our garden club, and mentioned how new exciting varieties will go for a few hundred bucks a pop for the first few years, then come down as more and more people have them.
All this talk of smell of Nepata cataria (Catmint, Catnip) foliage is because if you smash it at first you can tell it’s in the mint family (probably need a healthy plant and not dicolored foliage that’s unhealthy for the mint smell) but seconds later it’s supposed to smell of urine. I remember that from 20-years ago reading.
Walker’s Low is the same one we have, Roy, though ours looks more like @mamuang’s . Looks like yours is very happy (and so are the bees).
So, I went out and did the crush-and-sniff test myself this morning. Results:
Monarda fistulosa: Smells kind of like sage, sort of camphor-y, but not as pungent as sage. Not unpleasant, but not something I’d necessarily seek out.
Peter’s Fancy Fuschia bee balm (Monarda didyma): Smells more camphor-y, and also a little bit skunky. Trying to place the skunky part, because it reminds me of something, but I can’t think what. Not very pleasant at any rate.
Walker’s Low catmint (Nepeta racemosa): Struck me as smelling a little more like sage and a little less like mint-and-citrus than it did earlier in the year, but still a hint of the mint-and-orangey smell. Checked several times to see if the smell would turn rank, like @Barkslip suggested, but didn’t detect any change. Not quite as nice as earlier in the year, but still pleasant.
Have to admit that I don’t have the most sensitive nose in general, so it’s possible that I’m missing something that others might be turned off by. Or maybe it’s like the thing with cilantro, where different people respond very differently?
The main park here has a garden/pond and i just saw those globe flowers last night…had lots of bees on them. They also have some huge/beautiful liatris that were just covered with bees. I’ll have to take my camera down there. I need to buy new liatris and protect them in the spring because the rabbits chomp them.