Re: Daylily Vs. Hosta
- Subject: Re: Daylily Vs. Hosta
- From: h*@open.org
- Date: Tue, 19 Feb 2002 11:34:30 -0800 (PST)
Chick:
>In my world, if the prices the daylily people are getting for these
>new plants are logical, it should be because there is a shortage of
>plants available and a surplus of customers looking for such plants.
>There should not be a large number of daylilies selling for $100-250
>unless there are not enough excellent daylilies to go around.
I was intending to asnwer your original question about daylily prices
compard to hostas, but it's been difficult to find some time the last
few days.
As Bob said, daylily rust has pretty much destroyed the daylily market
right now. The wholesale market is way down. Last year I sold close
to 20,000 Stella De Oro daylilies. This year I will feel real lucky
if I sell 1,000. Some of the big named hybridizers are still doing
reasonably well, at least so far, but no one is predicting what the
daylily market will look like later in the year.
The high prices that new daylilies commanded were the result of
several factors. The first is that the daylily society has a fairly
high elitist element within the society and these people are generally
financially well off. They have been willing to pay the higher prices
because owning these newer introductions first is a prestige factor
for them. The high prices have also been artificially kept high by the
hybridizers because they knew collectors were willing to pay the high
prices. However, there has also been a steady growth in interest in
daylilies and over the last 20 years there has been a tremendous
increase in hybridizing and these hybridizers have been buying the
newest introductions. The demand has been increasing, at least for
the better cutting edge hybrids, and the hybridizers have maintained
the high prices because they knew they could get the prices. Also, a
lot of these newer hybridizers have come to believe that they need the
newest and latest daylilies. Of course, the big named hybridizers
haven't don't anything to dispel this impression.
The reason that hosta prices have come down considerably compared to
daylilies is due to TC and also, in part, because the Dutch have
gotten into hostas much sooner then they did with daylilies.
Daylilies have not been as easy to TC as hostas, and there is a lot
more variation in flower traits in daylilies then there is in leaves
of hostas. There is probably still a market for higher end hostas,
but it is probably limited. The higher prices for daylilies has been
driven by a high level of hybridizing. I doubt that the hosta world
has as many people hybridizing as in the daylily world. Actually,
there are probably few real hosta hybridizers as compared to people
who are just looking for sports. Admittedly, looking for sports is
important, but I wouldn't classify it as hybridizing as such.
I'm not sure how many people there are selling hostas, but I'm willing
to bet it is a lot less then with daylilies. There are very few
people hybridizing daylilies who are making money and the secondary
market is saturated right now. If you wanted to sell daylilies you
would have a hard time unless you are willing to spend a LOT of time
promoting yourselve. That's probably also true of someone who is not
part of the hosta world who wanted to sell hostas.
If, for some reason you still want to get into the daylily market,
I'll be having a fire sale this fall on many newer daylilies.
Joe Halinar
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