Speckled Apple (Williams-S., 2023)

Speckled Apple

4.5 x 22 EM sev Dip
Cream w/ deep rose stippling, rose eye, ruffled petals w/ lighter edges and ribs
3 branches, 25 buds
seedling x Mark's Bouquet
(Williams-S., 2023)

The name for this flower came from my daylily friend, Susan Ridder. Here is the story in her own words:

When my father was a young boy growing up in the small river town of Bellevue KY, there was man who sold apples from a cart that he pushed down the road along the Ohio river where my father lived. Every time my father saw the apple peddler he would stop playing and run to the man and asked him "How much for an apple?" The man would answer back "How much do you have?" My father would pull his hands out of his pockets and show him his empty hands. Whenever my father saw the man he would always stop him and ask how much it was for an apple, and the man always asked how much do you have? He never had enough to buy an apple. One day the man came and as usual my father would look at all the apples on the cart and but he noticed some apples that were set apart from the other apples so he asked the man "what are those apples" This time the man said to him "Well you know people don't like to buy the speckled apples" my father looked at him and said "But I like speckled apples". So the apple peddler gave him the speckled apples. From that time on when the apple peddler came he would shout out to my father "Hey Speck I have your apples!" and he would give him all the speckled apples as he knew my dad had 15 siblings to share with. That is how my dad got the nickname Speck. My father passed away of Alzheimer's. He never forgot that story it was the one memory the disease didn't take from him. At his funeral atop his casket was a picture of him as a boy with an apple in his hand, next to the picture was the story about his nickname and of course there sat a speckled apple as well.