vt Pewoual Note... 
TO MY FRIENDS AND CUSTOMERS 
In this, my 1955 catalog, I especially want to 
thank my many friends and customers for their 
overwhelming confidence in us. I want to thank 
you for making 1954 the best year of our exist- 
ence. I also want to thank so many of you for 
inquiring about my health since “finis’” was 
almost written for me several years ago. My 
health is better now than it has been for many 
years, and with the help of my son, Jake, and 
my brother’s son, L. M., both of whom have spent 
many years in this business, we have increased 
our plantings as well as our entire organiza- 
tion. Yes, I have much to be thankful for now. 
I want to cut this introduction short, because 
I want you to read the following article, which I 
think will be extremely interesting and certainly 
important to those who take their gardening 
seriously. Again let me say thanks to you, and 
I hope 1955 will find each of you with a more 
beautiful garden than ever. 
Respectfully yours, H. M. Russe.y 
CONCERNING “EVERGREEN” AND “DORMANT” DAYLILIES 
AND THEIR “REGIONAL” BEHAVIOR 
Ours Are Hardy All Over America—Here’s Why 
Much has been said about the regional be- 
havior of Daylilies—some right and some wrong. 
I wish to state, at the risk of sounding a bit 
“too much of an authority,” that I believe I 
have as much right to express myself on their 
regional behavior as anyone in America, having 
moved ten thousand Daylilies to Indiana in 1940 
from Texas for test purposes and sixty thousand 
Daylilies here from Wisconsin in 1948. Frankly, 
I don’t think out of the whole lot I lost ten 
plants, and solely because both types had been 
bred into them for years. Then too, the many 
letters from the tens of thousands to whom we 
have sent plants all over America attest to com- 
plete satisfaction. They have survived droughts 
that broke records, heat waves that broke 
records, freezes that broke records, both coming 
and going, and they survived. 
Now, of course, some varieties did much better 
in multiplication and heavy growth than other 
varieties, but this was because of their bred-up 
background rather than the climate. Even some 
varieties of the wild species, as we all know, from 
which all modern hybrids were developed, mul- 
tiply faster than others. My main purpose in 
writing this is to straighten out one of the biggest 
misconceptions that ever was expressed: ‘‘ Which 
variety does best in our section—EVERGREEN 
or DORMANT?” Much has been written, and 
some by misinformed persons, to the effect that 
dormant varieties are best for the North and 
evergreen best for the South. Even if this were 
so, where do we draw the line? We’ve got mid- 
south, mid-north, etc.—should they have to do 
without Daylilies? They will both do just as well 
in either section, PROVIDED both types have 
been bred into the plants, and it has taken many, 
many years to do this. 
There is quite an interesting article in one of 
the latest books on Hemerocallis concerning this 
2 
very subject, and I agree with the author whole- 
heartedly. After a Daylily has been bred for 
many years and has so many crosses of both 
types, evergreen and dormant, bred into it, you 
would be baffled when you looked at a variety if 
you didn’t know its background. Some so-called 
dormant varieties have more evergreen blood 
in them than dormant, and some so-called ever- 
green varieties have more dormant blood in 
them than evergreen. This is what I call recessive 
genes, varieties whose predominant ancestry 
doesn’t always show on the surface. In hybrid- 
izing Daylilies { wouldn’t think of using any of 
my varieties unless | knew something about its 
background, because now after we have grown 
complex hybrids for over twenty years we have 
learned something about recessive genes. For 
instance, if | were going to work with certain 
red varieties, it might bewilder you in some 
cases to see me using a lot of lemon and golds on 
one side to get better and deeper reds, when I 
might have used both red parents to st rt with; 
but that was because I knew there was more red 
blood in that particular yellow variety than in 
some red varieties, and it happened to have a 
particular character that I wanted to incorporate 
in that certain hybrid. Another case of recessive 
genes. 
I have read much lately by different hybrid- 
izers, many of whom were new in this work, who 
said “I’m working to get this’’ and “I’m working 
to get that’’ when really many of them didn’t 
know the background of the very plants they 
were working with. If they had they could have 
saved themselves many years of work, and 
theirs, too, might have been hardy all over 
America. I, myself, am working on many differ- 
ent blood lines, all with both types bred into 
them, so that we may know that they will be 
satisfactory all over America. Note the testi- 
monials throughout this catalog. Then, too, 
before we judge an individual bloom we certainly 
RUSSELL GARDENS, SPRING, TEXAS 
