I planted a ‘Big Smile’ daylily in my garden in the fall of 2007. Last year was its first year in my garden so it only gave me a handful of blooms.
You should never judge a daylily in its first year because it takes awhile for the plant to get used to your climate and growing conditions. Some of them will bloom true from their very first flower, but other times you’ll get splotches, washed out colors or even missing petals.
This year the scapes on ‘Big Smile’ are thick and still loaded with buds after 4 weeks of blooms. Performance-wise, I couldn’t be more pleased with the plant. The flowers, however, are a bit perplexing.
The other day I was walking through the garden admiring all the new daylily blooms when I spotted a cream-colored flower that I hadn’t seen before. I was startled to discover that it was ‘Big Smile’:
So far this summer my ‘Big Smile’ blooms had looked like this:
I must admit that I have several hundred cultivars blooming right now, so it’s a little hard to keep them all straight. Plus ‘Big Smile’ is such a heavy bloomer and looks great from a distance that I was willing to overlook the goofy flowers and not really scrutinize the plant.
Yesterday I researched ‘Big Smile’ online because I couldn’t remember what the flowers were really supposed to look like. This is what I saw:
Okaaaaay. Now I was more confused, not less. For kicks I looked through my flower images from last year. Here’s what the blooms looked like:
It’s a good thing this crazy daylily is such a prolific bloomer, or I might be inclined to dig it up. I’m not even sure it’s a true ‘Big Smile’ cultivar.
Instead I’ve decided to embrace the weirdness and enjoy the surprise I get every day when one of the flowers opens.