In winter 2019, I sowed a lot of seeds in my usual method of using cups and setting them in plastic shoe containers that were placed in a south facing window shelf. I sowed between 4-6 seeds in each cup of the same cross.

Well .... as misfortune would have it, my well-behaved (<---NOT!) cat, managed to get up on this shelf and knocked over most of the plastic shoe containers spilling all the cups with seedlings and dirt all over the floor. It was an utter mess. I tried to figure out which seedlings were in each labeled cup, but it was pretty challenging to say the least.

I did my best to try to discern which plants belonged in which labeled cup. Well, now it is Spring 2020 and the seedlings (that survived) are starting to bloom. So I will be seeing the blooms for the first time. The first seedling to bloom is one that was placed in ground with the label NNN24. Here are photos of 2 of the blooms on a single scape today:



Because the bloom color is so light, I am now wondering if this seedling is the cross that I thought it was after the disaster created by my cat.

I put together a parentage photo of what I believed this cross to be, but I could be totally wrong:


I need opinions, please! Could this seedling be that cross? If so, please give me some comments why it could be. If not, please give me some comments as to why not. I really appreciate it.

I do happen to have a complete list of all the crosses I sowed that year, but I know that is like a needle in a haystack.....

THANK YOU!!!

Looking at the parents of the pollen parent, it looks like it could be correct to me. However, I will defer to any experts who chime in!

Except for the color it looks to me like everything fits. Took some traits from the pod parent and others from the pollen parent. The flower size is in between.

I'm pretty sure I've had seedlings like this before. You may never be 100% sure but I'd say you have the right cross.

Valerie and Elena - Thank you for your comments!

To all - Is it possible to get a lighter colored bloom from parents who have darker colored blooms?

I think that is what is really throwing me off. The pod parent, TTT26, parents are CCC05 (Laughing Clown x Zanti Misfit) x Little Jet Setter: Below is the parentage of TTT26 (and it's sibling TTT27):

My answer would be that it is possible. In my opinion it may not be the most likely. There are probably many other combinations of parents that could just as easily produce the seedling.

One of the problems trying to ID such seedlings in this type of situation is the history of daylily breeding over these multiple decades since the late 1800's.... and how the resulting genes combinations express themselves. Most modern daylily 'Hybridizers' are actually really daylily 'breeders' .... We've allowed the real terminology to become distorted over the years. Hybridizing sounds so much more advanced, more scientific, more precise, when in fact most pollinations are nowadays made with mongrel genetic combinations.

When you make a cross between different species or between a specie & an AHS registered modern, or historical cultivar, or seedling - then you are actually hybridizing as I view it. Involving that specie determines that it is a hybridization in my opinion. Every other cross that does not involve a specie is simply breeding.

Breed a registered purebred German Shepherd to another of the same stature and you are breeding purebreds. (Other than the species we work with I don't know of any 'purebred' daylilies yet in commerce or in amateur breeding circles.) Breed that same stud German Shepherd to a Black Labrador and you get a litter of mongrel puppies. Breed one of those pups back to one of the parents and you still have mongrel puppies as a result. Breed those siblings together and you get mongrels ...

Keeping this in mind, there have been multiple generations of breeding with multiple mixes of genes therefore to predict results is certainly not a science, but is at best an approximation of the outcome. There are people who write on this forum that are able to look at a group of seedlings and because of their knowledge of genetics & of dominant-recessive factors they can advise if certain colours or features are possible or probable or not possible. (This is not something I am able to do.)

All of this to say that daylily breeders have advanced an incredibly long way from those species over the decades by selective breeding for certain characteristics or features or colours or performance capabilities. I stand to be corrected, but nearly all of these achievements have been by breeding with cultivars with multiples of mixed genes, thus mongrels, - thus predicting or analysing seedling results is imprecise, speculative, wishful thinking, etc.

Becky, my first instinct is to say no, those parents didn't make that seedling. I know I read an article about dominant and recessive genes in daylilies, but I can't remember the name of the article. Pretty sure I got if off of the NHS/NDS. But I seem to recall that red genes were dominant. So to get an orange there would have to be long standing recessive genes that have been masked by the dominant red.

@admmad can you shed yet more light on this?

ShakespearesGarden said: But I seem to recall that red genes were dominant. So to get an orange there would have to be long standing recessive genes that have been masked by the dominant red.

admmad can you shed yet more light on this?

Flower colour in daylilies can be quite complicated. In this case the possible parents provide evidence from their own flower colours that they can produce many different colours in their seedlings. Unfortunately that may also be the case for other possible parents from other crosses that may become mixed-up.

Let's have a look at what a dictionary of genetics (2006) indicates.

breeding - the controlled propagation of plants and animals

My interpretation - Whenever I cross any two animals or two plants I am breeding. It does not matter whether the animals or plants are purebred, species, etc. Whenever the mating and production of offspring is controlled, it is breeding.

hybridization - 1. the mating of individuals belonging to genetically disparate populations or to different species.
hybridization - 2. in Mendelian terms, the mating of any two unlike genotypes or phenotypes.

My interpretation - In these two cases I am not only breeding but also hybridizing.

Thank you for the clarification, Maurice. My own interpretation of the differences (Your clarification #1) comes from personal experiences going back over the years. The hybridizing of animals - birds + mammals + fish would tend to follow your explanation of #1 .... Many such examples are readily found in the pet trade + 'zoo trade' + falconry + sports fisheries + draft animals + etc.

Perhaps plant breeding could - should - be considered differently?. Some of my own thinking arises from a few discussions (Many years ago with a pelargonium ('Geraniums') breeder (I was working part-time at a landscape/retail nursery operation.) and his explanations to me were as I've outlined earlier. - ie. Species X different species is hybridization whereas anything further down the line such as F1; F2; etc in almost any combination, was simply breeding with a plan, a purpose, a strategy. He further explained that species x same species is simply breeding, looking for naturally occurring variations that sometimes arise from within such populations.

Aside from the semantics, the correct academic definitions like yours, most daylily breeders - or hybridizers - are working with a mix of genes that - if only for my own clarity - are mongrels. Incredible breeding results of course are obvious, in both animals & plants using such mixed genetic parents.

Thanks again for stepping in with clarification.

I think that in practice making distinctions is splitting hairs.
If I cross two different species then I can call the F1 between them an interspecific hybrid. When I cross two different species I am making a cross with parents with a substantial number of genetic differences. However, if I happen to make a cross between two sibling species then I am making a cross between two species that often cannot be recognized as being different without sophisticated tests and are very genetically similar.
If I cross two inbred lines of the same species then the F1 between them is an F1 hybrid and usually considered "special" in several respects.
I can also cross individuals of the same species but from two different populations of that species and then I have an interpopulation hybrid, etc.

The daylily gene pool was originally created by crossing many different species together. Effectively all daylilies are interspecific hybrids. Most (but not all) of them are many generations removed from the F1 generations.

There is no definition for "mongrel" in the genetics dictionary I examined. This is the Cambridge English Dictionary definition - "a dog whose parents are of different breeds". On that basis no the daylilies in the gene pool are not mongrels since they did not have parents of different breeds. They had ancestors of different species many generations ago (usually) and so they are interspecific hybrids many generations removed. However, if we disregard that many of them have ancestors from more than one species and simply consider the gene pool as that of an interbreeding population (one for diploids and a separate one for tetraploids) then the daylilies in the gene pool would be the same as individual people genetically.

If we look at the dictionary definition above for "mongrel" that is a hybrid. Hybrids (cross-breds) have been used for some years in beef cattle for their hybrid vigour.