ROGER GROUNDS
ROGER GROUNDS is the earliest flowering Spider
Variant - almost a Classic Spider - that I have in the garden, growing low
and blooming profusely just above the foliage, I felt that it fulfilled
a niche in the garden and was worthy of introduction. After being left undisturbed
for three years, the clumps exploded with bloom as seen above, with two
and three-way branched scapes and flowers covering the foliage mound. Starting
early in Mid season, ROGER GROUNDS bloomed and rebloomed for us here in
Italy for over two months in 1999, creating smashing displays of rich burgundy
flowers. Substance is not heavy, but it showed very little tissue weakening
in our 90 - 100 degree (F) weather in mid July. Colours are richer, however,
in cooler weather.
Not an easy pod parent; its pollen is very fertile
and produces many clear pinks and pastel shades of apricot and azalea rose
pink when combined with genetically melon flowers.
Diana Grenfell (Grounds), while visiting and researching
for her book DAYLILIES, published now by CHARLES AND DAVID, was taken aback
by this cultivar in full bloom. I asked her if her husband, Roger Grounds,
a Spider Form enthusiast, would mind if I named it after him and he agreed.
The jpg image above was scanned too yellow, the
colour is a bright burgundy with yellow throat and green heart with the
burgundy extending into the throat in subtle veining.
The Story: In the summer of 1989 I finally had
bloom in our little Swiss mountain-side garden of the stunning Classic Spider
KINDLY LIGHT and the Spider Variant OPEN HEARTH, sent to me by Rosemary
Whitacre of Columbia, Missouri. She had explained to me the year before
that difficult nocturnally-opening pod parents could be coaxed into setting
seeds by prying open the swollen, just-about-to-open buds and placing the
prepared, dried pollen of the other partner onto the pistil of the flower.
She warned me that KINDLY LIGHT had only once given her seed, and that she
had tried for over 20 years to work with it. (There are approximately 5
impostors of KINDLY LIGHT in circulation; she was referring to the "Real
KINDLY LIGHT".)
The evening I tried to do this cross an electrical
storm blew in off the Lake of Zurich, illuminating the mountainsides with
lightning. But it didn't rain. I placed the pollen of OPEN HEARTH into 15
flowers of KINDLY LIGHT with the moist air filled with a tingling sensation
of electrical charges. All 15 pods seemed to take. The end of the summer
had left me, however, with only 8. Within the 8 pods there were only 5 with
seeds. Of the 15 seeds harvested, only 5 survived to bloom 4 years later.
Of the 5, ROGER GROUNDS presented enough attributes to consider registration.
All of the flowers of this cross were either Classic Spiders or near to
it.