Posted: January 04 2005 at 12:02am | IP Logged

Here you go, Dave!

(This article originally appeared, and is reproduced from, the American Hemerocallis Society Region Two, the first full-color Newsletter, Spring 1985, covering Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, and Wisconsin.  This full-color newsletter was a going away present from the outgoing RDP, Phillip Brockington and Leo Sharp.  Can you imagine the delight of those recipients, for the first time in a newsletter, seeing excellent color photography of DAWN BALLET (Reckamp ’75), BANTU BAUBLE (Weston, ’85),  SILOAM ROYAL PRINCE (Henry ’83), ANGEL ARTISTRY (Soules, ’83), JAPANETTE (Millikan, yet not introduced), GOLDEN CORDUROY (Jablonski, ’82), along with photos of Ginny Guzior, Ralph and Pauline Henry in the Brincka/Cross garden, a hungry crowd around the picnic table at Phillip Brockington’s, including Jim and Marilyn Siwik, Olive Pauley, Jim Cooper, and Bill Vaughn; and last but not least, the National Treasure Group photo of Mavis Smith, Walter Jablonski, Pauline Henry and Van Sellers.)

Meet Brother Charles Reckamp  by Leo Sharp

             The last time I had seen Brother Charles Reckamp was on a hot July day in 1981 during the AHS national convention in Chicago.  The Klehm Nursery had invited AHS members to their farm in the northwest Chicago suburbs for a luncheon and tour of their daylily growing fields.  I was fortunate to find a place to sit next to Brother Charles, introduce myself, and draw some information from him regarding his daylily introductions that day.  The occasion for Brother Charles to be present was that the Klehm nurseries distribute this fine tetraploid introductions.

             It was to be the last day of November, on Saturday, 1984 when I was to meet Brother Charles for the second time.  As the departing RPD of Region 2, I thought it might be interesting to our newsletter readers to do a report on one of our region’s best known hybridizers and I had made arrangements by phone to interview Brother Charles just the day before.  He had given me very reliable instructions on how to locate him, and I arrived at the Brother’s residence on time and without incident.  When I pulled into the parking lot, he was waiting at the door and gave me a friendly greeting and walked me immediately into the dining room of the residence where the Brothers take their daily meals. It was fascinating to note that he had not seemed to have aged a day since our last meeting.  He was agile and antimated, and looking forward to celebrating his 80^th birthday in January, 1985. 

I found that in addition to hybridizing daylilies, Brother Charles has another hobby, that of creating stained glass ornaments.  I was treated to an instant lesson and shown three of is stained glass creations which were decorating the dining room windows.  Brother Charles then escorted me to his private quarters in the Residence Building, which is built on the order of a modest hotel, where we could enjoy some privacy and get on with the interview.  His own comfortable but small quarters, looked out from a second story window onto a wide expanse of lawn, dotted with a fine copper Beech, and other interesting lawn trees.  Brother Charles took a seat at his desk and offered me what obviously was his own favorite lounge chair.  We briefly discussed the interview and I then set upon the tough task of crunching a lifetime devoted to horticulture into a few paragraphs.

Brother Charles Reckamp was raised on a farm about fifty miles northwest of St. Louis, Missouri.  He was the third from the eldest in an original family of nine children.  After the passing of his mother, his father remarried and an additional eleven children (half sisters and brothers) resulted from that union.  He eventually, then, had nineteen sisters and brothers.  In his youth, Brother Charles had admired nuns who taught in his area and began to have thoughts of devoting his own life to serving a higher Order.  His research led him to ultimately join the Society of the Divine Word in 1927 at the age of twenty two.  The Society trains missionaries for domestic and international service in such areas as New Guinea, Africa, Japan, Indonesia and elsewhere.

When he entered the Order, the Society had a modest nursery on the premises.  His biology professor suggested that the students expand the plant nursery into a commercial enterprise to earn money for the support of the Order.  Brother Charles accepted that challenge and in the next two decades the Mission Gardens, as the enterprise became known, grew to where at its peak it encompassed fifty acres of fertile Illinois farm land.  All manner of plants, trees, and bulbs were offered at the garden.  Today the Mission Nursery no longer exists.  As the Brothers grew older, and seasonal labor began to be a problem, the nursery was closed.  The nursery had served its purpose, however, as it was through the business that Brother Charles met Orville Fay, David Hall, and Dr. Robert Griesbach who would influence the course of his life through daylilies.

Fay and hall frequently came to the Mission Nurseries to purchase their own horticultural needs and to encourage Brother Charles to hybridize.  At the time, in the late 1940’s Brother Charles was hybridizing iris.  These two later famous daylily hybridizers encouraged him to become interested in hems.  It was an easy transition from hybridizing iris to daylilies, as the iris required his attention right at the peak of the nursery business in the spring.  Daylily season, happily came in midsummer as the Mission Nursery business subsided.

According to Brother Charles’ description of existing daylilies at that time, they were a far cry from our present day wide petalled, elegant flower.  He reports that daylilies were, “narrow petalled, thin petalled, recurved and limited in colors”.  In fact he states that all he saw in those days in a range of colors were yellow, orange, and peach colored daylilies.  Other colors seemed non existent.  To this day, Brother Charles still does not fancy recurved daylilies.  His personal preference is for the flower to put its best foot forward with the most attractive view from the front and with all the segments fully visible from that advantage.

In the next decade, many important breakthroughs would occur in daylily hybridizing.  Orville Fay imported species daylilies from Japan, which Brother Charles remembers as being very fragile.  By this time Fay had gotten involved in tetraploids.  One of Fay’s most advanced tets was named CRESTWOOD ANN.  Brother Charles paid Fay about $200 as he remembers for a single fan of that plant.  One of the Brothers of his Order then converted a number of diploid cultivars for Brother Charles, and that was the very beginning of his line of tetraploid daylilies.  After several years of hybridizing, Brother Charles in 1966 introduced his most significant breeding accomplishment to that date, this cultivar was named COMMANDMENT.  In 1962 he had succeeded in breaking the “trumpet” appearance in his breeding line to develop a “wide open faced” flower, which he named CHANGING TIMES.  In 1962 he also introduced MILEPOST, an induced tet, which added so much of the pastel color to his breeding line.

One of my favorites developed by Brother Charles has long been LITTLE RAINBOW, introduced in 1965 (a diploid).  Close examination of many of his flowers reveals what I refer to as a kaleidescope of colors.  I believe that these colors came from RINGLETS, which he used to bring pastels along.  (This was an introduction from Dr. Kraus).  This coloration may also be found in another favored tet by Brother Charles, SOMBRERO WAY, introduced in 1969.  At one time Brother Charles introductions were handled by Steve Moldovan who originally spotted LITTLE RAINBOW for the first time in the seedling bed.  I have long wondered how SOMBRERO WAY got its name.  It always seemed to me that the name SOMBRERO alone would be appropriate enough.  The story develops that SOMBRERO was to be the planned name, but the extra word WAY was added after it was discovered that the name SOMBRERO had already been taken.

His first really good apricot colored introductions were CORNERSTONE and COMMANDMENT, in 1966.  HEAVENLY HARP, came along in 1965, and DIVINE WORD, in 1969, both exceptional pastels.  The first significant ruffling appeared in 1971 on a variety named AMEN.  This was followed by Brother Charles’ finest pastel (by his own reckoning), which also had ruffles in 1975, named DAWN BALLET.  He reports that every single year his line improves consistently with evidence of broader, rounder petals and a more open and flaring flower.  He is firmly convinced that hybridizing tetraploids “offers greater potential for genetically different colors and a broader range of form”. 

In 1976 Brother Charles was approached by Roy Klehm of the Klehm Nurseries in Arlington Heights, Illinois.  Mr. Klehm proposed to handle Brother Charles’ introductions, which Brother Charles accepted.  He now raises his seedlings to blooming size and after they are carefully selected and named, they are marketed by the Klehm Nurseries.  In order to supply the huge number of hems that are required to satisfy the public demand at both retail and wholesale levels, the daylilies are tissue cultured.  Although it has been absolutely scientifically proven that tissue cultured plants are genetically equivalent to field grown increased plants, there still remain the naysayer who express doubts about this.  Brother Charles is an avid proponent of propogation through tissue culture, and considers the practice a “blessing”, in that literally thousands of people can now enjoy quality daylilies who otherwise might not be able to do so.  It is interesting, however, that for some unknown reason, not all cultivars will respond to the tissue culture technique.

I found it interesting that Brother Charles uses more seedlings in his crosses currently, than he does named varieties.  He reports that while he did introduce KING ALFRED, a famous yellow double, that he does not really care for double daylilies all that much.  He said that when he first saw KING ALFRED as a seedling that it reminded him of the daffodil of the same name, hence the name stuck.  His first love seems to be apricot colored hems.  He feels that the standard in that color is AMBER PALACE, which was introduced in 1972.  His most recent apricot introductions are HOSANNA, and SUMMER AIR.    

We discussed reblooming characteristics at some length.  Brother Charles does not consider reblooming to be all that valuable in these northern latitudes, where the rebloom generally occurs during the late summer or fall when nights are cool and flowers do not open properly.  However, he did discover a remarkable plant this summer (seedling NO. 79-10), in a seedling that produced a total of nine rebloom scapes on two three year old plants.  This reblooming tet will be named PSALTER AND HARP.

In an attempt to produce a potentially larger red daylily, Brother Charles made some crosses into his line of melons with a red named variety.  The offspring of this cross were unimpressive, he reports, and appeared somewhat muddied.  If he has a single gal these days, it is to come up with a good pink tet.  He says that pink has begun to manifest itself in his line.  His introductions are widely respected for their excellent branching and he notes that this characteristic has vastly improved over the years.  He feels that in his advanced years that he will be satisfied in simply improving his line each year, rather than attempting breakthroughs.  He finds that each and every year brings superior seedlings to his seedling bed.

Brother Charles currently confines his hybridizing efforts to growing a little less than one thousand seedlings annually.  Each blooming season presents him with an opportunity to select anywhere from fifty to one hundred seedlings for further evaluation.  The integrity of is efforts is demonstrated by the fact that he only introduces a handful of new plants annually.  He still feels indebted most importantly in his work to Orville Fay and Dr. Robert Griesbach.

Brother Charles continues to be honored for hi hybridizing efforts.  I’m certain that a source of pride and pleasure was the selection of a color picture of his introduction ANGEL’S DELIGHT, which graced the cover of the prestigious Wayside Garden catalog for the Fall of 1981.  Brother Charles was most recently honored by the CHICAGO BOTANICAL GARDEN when he was presented with their first “Award of Linnaeus” which is bestowed upon individuals whom the society feels have devoted a lifetime to horticultural achievement.

In addition to the time Brother Charles devotes to hybridizing Hemerocallis, he finds time to grow a crop of tomatoes each year in a quantity to supply his fellow Brothers of the Order, which number about fifty members.  My personal feeling is that Brother Charles will not only continue to improve his fine line of beautiful hems, but will surprise us all over the next few years with new beautiful breakthroughs that even he may not yet envision.  His most recent favorites which he reports are producing some unusually fine seedlings, are two new varieties, PRICELESS PEARL and MY SUNSHINE.  The Klehm nursery will shortly have both of these fine introductions available.

And so it was, back in the Spring of 1985.