Re: HYB: Daylight independent

Chuck, it took a lot of attempts before I was able to get IMMORTALITY to survive here. The attempt that was finally successful consisted of planting about half dozen rhizomes in several different locations (varying soil and microclimate).
As a result, there are 6 thriving, fairly large colonies of IMM here, each of which usually sends up more than one bloomstalk. I do not dig and reset any of my plants (except to rescue/line out seedlings), just thin them out to take donations to club rhizome sales.
As a result, these clumps consist of rhizomes of all sizes and ages. They send up stalks at various times until temperatures get too hot (not sure how hot). Earliest stalks are usually badly damaged by late freezes, sometimes frozen out completely, but they are still there. Bloom stalks therefore are coming up from about the time the SDBs are blooming until the very latest of all the oncers. These clumps also send up stalks any time summer temperatures are cool enough to trigger them.
I'm not suggesting that the <genetics> of rebloom in FOREVER BLUE and IMMORTALITY are the same - your data seem to prove that isn't the case. But my experience with IMM is that bloom is daylight independent as long as temperatures are cool enough.
Do you know what the stalk to fan ratio for FOREVER BLUE and IMMORTALITY is in your growing conditions? The stalk to fan ratio for IMM is really low here - I'd guess 1 stalk for 10 fans. Or worse.
Point I'm trying to make with all this rambling is that maybe your IMM X FOREVER BLUE seedlings would have proved to be daylight independent if you'd grown them to enormous clumps.
Not exactly a desirable trait! IMM can certainly produce a lot of babies with weedy foliar growth and few bloom stalks.
And I'm not sure what the physiology might be.. implies slow/impaired? maturation of rhizomes to blooming size. 

?

--
Linda Mann east Tennessee USA zone 7/8
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