A note for hybridizers about the "Unknown" pod parent of Leigh Fanana and Sirius Lee:

 

Dr. Apricot is the garden name for a favorite daylily I bought 25 years ago. It was a beautiful polychrome being sold as Dramatic Apricot at a high-end local nursery. It was only when I started hybridizing, many years later, that I was motivated to look it up and discover there was no such daylily as "Dramatic Apricot". Whoever was labeling the daylilies for that local nursery must have been smoking funny cigarets and having some fun.

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I labeled it "Dr Apricot" for shorthand, and so it became Doctor Apricot. I have tried for years to identify it, but there are so many polychromes from the Brother Charles Reckamp years, and the colors can vary so much in photos, that it has been impossible to nail it down. 

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Because of its gorgeous color(s) and approximate age, I have proceeded on the assumption the Dr. Apricot is a line-bred polychrome from Brother Charles. It is far and away the most beautiful colored polychrome I have ever seen, though it is impossible to capture all its hues in pics. 

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It has terrible branching and bud count, yet oddly, many of its kids  have excellent branching. Whether this is due to the other parent, or branching bursting forth once  a highly line-bred Reckamp is crossed with something completely outside its gene family, I don't know. But I have crossed it with many different colors and flower forms and gotten a wide variety of kids. I am happy to think it is bringing at least some of Brother Charles's life work to the table.  Of the 2019 intros, Leigh Fanana is a cross with Wiggly Piggly, and Sirius Lee is a cross with Chew Mailpouch Tobacco.

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