Chances are that when a new scape comes up it will again bloom true. Whether or not it is due to tissue culture or just conditions is hard to say, but in my experience, if the whole scape blooms completely wrong, it is TC. Each scape should bloom the same flowers. Sometimes thrips or conditions may make individual blooms vary, so wait and see what happens.

One creative method you may use is to scold the plant and follow up with punishment if the behavior continues.

ROFLMAO @ Wade, now he will ask what TC is you big dummy!!
ha ha ha

I've never heard of a daylily changing color from purple to yellow. Stellas set pods easily if you don't remove the old flowers. If you've had the Stellas for a while, it's possible that a Stella seedling has gotten mixed up in your Woodside Amethyst and that is what is blooming now. Does your Woodside Amethyst usually bloom as early as the Stellas? You can put different daylilies in the same beds - if you are worried about unwanted seedlings, you should remove the old flowers before they form seedpods.

Juliet

Ha, I think I do need to know what TC is now. I may have a clue as to what that is actually, but I don't know what it means to scold it. And, does a new scape mean a new shoot off of the plant? I have had my stellas for awhile now. And no, the amethyst only bloomed yesterday. the stellas have been blooming now for over a month. The amethyst were so pretty last year, and now I have what looks like large stellas. By the way, the yellow color is so deep and bright on these amethyst. They really are a pretty shade, but I bought them for the purple color.

Depending on where you bought them, they may have been tissue cultured (probably were). Sometimes a tissue cultured plant can put up a mutated scape that can bloom anything. I had an Ed Murray way way back that alternated putting up true scapes and then scapes that bloomed a red/yellow bicolor spider variant. EM is a black red.

Tissue culture is a science lab method of turning one scape into 100 new tiny plants. Genetic mutations are common. Have you seen the movie Gattaca? Genetic manipulation of humans...cool! Starts with plants and ends up with us...will inbreeding be a apart of it? Dang right it will be. Clone those genes!

I bet his Stellas got rowdy and threw some seeds over in his
purple stuff just for spite. Stellas make enough seed to populate the world. They are fruitful.
I wish I could think of some big words to answer Wade with he is soooooooooooooo smart.
But I'm just gonna go make breakfast now, I have caused enough trouble for today.

Dot

Hi teppy,

Scape is what a daylily's flower stem is called.

Charlie

thanks Dot, yeah those stellas have some strong genes. They want to dominate. I guess this bed will have all yellow daylillies. It won't look so bad. They go great with the agapanthus that are also in it. After all, I am from Louisiana and a huge LSU fan. Purple and gold.

Ok, this may sound stupid, but some of you are talking about the stella's having strong genes, and probally crossed with the amethyst. But wouldn't that just create a new pod, then the seeds have to fall to the ground and grow NEW plants, that more than likely wouldn't bloom the first year? The way it reads, you're saying that if the stella's cross polenated w/ the amythest, then the original amythest plant suddenly mutates into a cross. Unless thats something that happens that I don't know about.

The TC answer sounds more feesable to me. That or, not knowing how many plants you have and how they're organized, or if they're marked, that you may be watching the wrong plant?

Just my thoughts...not trying to offend anyone here, all I know about daylilies is that them be sum purrrty thangs coming out of dat dare dirt!

I think they are saying that Stellas commonly self-pollinate and then spread like weeds. I appreciate your logic as I used that same idea combined with experience when I posted. I generally do not take a step back and ask if the poster just made a poor observation. The original question was why a daylily flowers a different color and if there was some cloaking going on with propogation. If that question was a valid one, then logic would reply with my answer. If the observation was flawed, then the cloaking answer may be correct.

Don'tcha just love a good mystery?

Karri,
You are correct.
There is a lot of good humor on this forum.

Teppy,
Not knowing how well spaced your plants are, I can't give you a definitive answer.Maybe WA just han't bloomed yet.Just go out and snap off Stella's seed pods if you don't want her messin' with the classey inhabitants.Snapping off the pods will also encourage more blooms on 'er.

Oh yes, it is the woodside amethyst that has definitely bloomed, and it's bloomed yellow. I also can say 100% that these are the woodside's that I'm looking at. I always plant my ID tags from the plants right next to the plant. They were purple last year, and now they are not. I spaced them according to the planting instruction tag at 25" apart. The stella's are planted around these just kind of sporatically. Can I post photos to this site? I will upload a photo.

Oh yes, it is the woodside amethyst that has definitely bloomed, and it's bloomed yellow. I also can say 100% that these are the woodside's that I'm looking at. I always plant my ID tags from the plants right next to the plant. They were purple last year, and now they are not. I spaced them according to the planting instruction tag at 25" apart. The stella's are planted around these just kind of sporatically. Can I post photos to this site? I will upload a photo.

Oh yes, it is the woodside amethyst that has definitely bloomed, and it's bloomed yellow. I also can say 100% that these are the woodside's that I'm looking at. I always plant my ID tags from the plants right next to the plant. They were purple last year, and now they are not. I spaced them according to the planting instruction tag at 25" apart. The stella's are planted around these just kind of sporatically. Can I post photos to this site? I will upload a photo.

Just a few days ago, I heard a lecture from a local perennial expert, her name Suzanne Patry: she owns a big place in Ottawa area called Whitehouse Perennials. Anyhow, she said that tissue cultured daylilies are the pits! Hostas, however, are very good tissue cultured. After a few bad experiences with daylilies that did not bloom in colours promised, I now buy only what I see.

Oh, what a time! Just want to warn you ( if you haven't already discovered it), that agapanthus will increase even faster than the Stella's. You will have to run fast to catch it.

Kay

I am afraid I have to agree with the wade man. It sounds like a tissue culture gone bad.

shapiro, I think Hosta TC's are bad too!! I bought two, seperate times, not knowing they were tc's. One was very similar to it's namesake ( Christmas Tree ) but not nearly as pretty. I have both. The original, I got from Mary Chastain at Lakeside Garden and the other came from a local grower. Lakeside's was the true one....Ellie

Interesting stuff,

I don't know anything about daylilies changing color that drastically, but I have witness lots of daylilies sending out offshoots so far away from the parent plant that you'd swear they were a totally different plant.

I've also had one variety of daylily growing in the middle of another, and I only noticed the second daylily variety a few years later, when it became large enough to bloom. Somehow a few extra fans (of something else) got put in at the time it was dug. I was even at the grower while it was being dug. It looked somewhat similiar to the variety my friend had purchased at the same time.

Mary

Of course I don't know how many plants/fans we're talking about with regard to her Woodside Amethyst so I could be way off, but I suppose it's also possible there was a fan or more within that WA clump she bought that was a different plant from the getgo -- just maybe didn't bloom before. Or it was done blooming before she bought the WAs. This is only their second year and it could be that mysterious yellow variety could be a "walker" type whose roots reached out a ways from its parent clump and it formed a new fan(s) within a neighboring WA clump at the growers' even before it was dug, potted & shipped. Depends on how closely the grower had planted different clumps of different varieties together. And that same possibility might apply to a stray seed(s) falling within a WA clump & germinating. It would appear to be one clump, i.e. the same plant with fans coming up from the same point but there really are fans of two different varieties scrunched together tightly. I'd still say give it some more time to see if you get some purples start to show their pretty faces. And if not, the tissue culture theory is probably right on.

Squirrellypete

squirrellypete, Its three WA plants that we are talking about here. They did all bloom last year after I put them in the ground. This year I had been waiting for them to bloom and just could not believe what I was seeing when they did open up. I will leave them where they are and see what happens. I do have some pardon me's that I just planted a few weeks ago and they are so pretty. I had one bloom yesterday for the first time. I will be sure and keep those stellas away! If I let one move in, well you know what they say, "there goes the neighborhood". Just kidding, I do love my stellas. I can always count on them to bloom all spring through summer. They add so much color to my yard and give the best contrast to other plants as they bloom.