One of my seedling blooms today had lots of stamens, but no pistil. I was attempting to cross this bloom with some other daylily's frozen pollen to no avail because of the lack of this reproductive part.

In the past, I've seen no pollen on the anthers, but this is the first time I haven't seen a pistil in a daylily bloom. The bloom looked perfectly normal to me except the lack of a pistil. I am wondering how common this is and what causes this to happen?

I have seen it every once in awhile. Sometimes when a plant starts blooming the first couple of blooms will have no stigmas. I have seen this more often on doubles.

This year my WILD DREAMS did that with almost every flower, but right near the end of its bloom it opened five flowers with pistils -- and I was successful in getting pods on each of them. So don't give up on it...

I had 5 scapes on WILD DREAMS and there were pistil-less blooms on each of them!

Mapping Pennsylvania does this a lot in its first week of bloom.

Thanks for the replies! This is a seedling that has already bloomed two blooms, so I was very surprised to see this one missing the pistil on the 3rd bloom (these are all on the same scape). I have one bud left and hopefully I will see a pistil on that one when it blooms. So far, I am batting zero on the seedling pods. Might have something to do with the frozen pollen.

I have had Wild Dreams since it's release and it always has lots of blooms without pistils, but the blooms that do will set a seed every time. This is the only flaw I have seen in this flower and have not seen this trait in the seedlings. The Tet version has the same pistil problem, Michele gave me two blooms of Tet Wild Dreams and that was the first thing I noticed, no pistil.

All daylilies will have this problem from time to time so it's a pretty common thing.

Thanks for that information, Fred!

I have one more bud left on that seedling, so am interested to see if it has a pistil. My hybridizing efforts with the frozen (thawed) pollen seems to be zero. (sigh) Oh well, there is always next year for pods.

Just a note on saved pollen - if you continue to have trouble (frozen has never worked for me) you may want to try saving some of the pollen in the refrigerator in addition to freezing it. I have just gotten seedlings from a refrigerated pollen cross that was between 17-day-old pollen anthers used on another cultivar. They had been in and out of the fridge almost every day in 90 degree weather during that time, since all were kept in a pill container with 21 different cells of various pollen.

Another pod's seed that is just getting put in starter soil was from 11-day-old pollen. Refrigeration may not extend pollen for years, but it does seem to work for at least 2.5 weeks in my experience. And, that can stretch crosses out over a nice span of the season, with many more FFOs appearing after the last blooms of those refrigerated anthers.

Botanically speaking, the pistil includes the ovary. Is that still present, and is there just no style emanating from it if so?

In the cases I have seen there is an ovary but no style. I usually break those blooms off so the person who may be helping me tag won't tag the ones that I didn't pollinate and there is an ovary there.

Tina - Thanks! I will try that. I wondered if storing the pollen in the refrigerator instead of the freezer might work better. You answered my question for short-term pollen storing.

Sue - I don't know. I didn't dissect the bloom.

Michele - That's a good idea! I typically tag mine when I pollinate them because I don't have as many. This year I only have 2 seed pods from older daylilies that were open-pollinated. I wasn't planning to hand-pollinate any of those, but apparently a bee or butterfly did!

Today the final bloom on that daylily opened and it does have a pistil, so will try once again to hand-pollinate it. If the frozen pollen is any good at all. (sigh)

I've also seen extremely short styles in a few doubles, hidden down so far in the extra petals that it would be hard to dab, and not necessarily looking as though there were an opening for the pollen to enter. @sooby do you have any info to share about such occurrences?

None of the blooms that I missed pollinating set pods from ants, bees, or butterflies even though we have a backyard metropolis of all of them. Do you know roughly how many older daylily blooms you had where two resulted in insect pollinated pods, Becky?

Here's my happy store of refrigerated pollen, not well organized this first go-round, but will be ready next year (color coding really helps add a layer of easily sorted info, but dates on cells instead of in my journal will be easier - found these at a dollar store so stocked up and jumped right in).



BTW, that one pollen cell holds the most interesting anthers I'd ever seen ... ridges. I'm still pondering it.

chalyse said:None of the blooms that I missed pollinating set pods from ants, bees, or butterflies even though we have a backyard metropolis of all of them.

The daylily species are naturally cross-pollinating, so if we grow specimens of any of the diploid species they will set pods naturally (or else the species would not grow new individuals in native regions. The species will have what are called pollination syndromes. Those are sets of characteristics that are different for different pollinators. For example, some daylily species bloom during the day (Hemerocallis fulva) and others open their flowers in the evening (Hemerocallis citrina). Those species will attract different pollinating insects and will have different pollination syndromes. Once hybridizers crossed species the different pollination syndromes were broken apart and no longer work as effectively.
In my growing conditions, 'Tetrina's Daughter' sets many pods naturally. So does 'Ophir'. Both are night blooming and scented. The pods are probably set by the night-flying moths I have seen visiting the flowers. Both cultivars are only a few generations removed from the species and there pollination syndromes have not been completely broken apart.
Many different insects visit daylily flowers for the pollen. That includes bees that collect the pollen as well as insects such as grasshoppers that eat the pollen. Ants collect either nectar or some other substance in the flowers.
'Stella de Oro' typically sets natural pods. I think that occurs so often because the stigma and anthers are very close to each other physically because the pistil and anthers are about the same length.
When insects visit a flower for pollen, they not only remove pollen but they also accidentally spread pollen on the different flower parts. That includes spreading the pollen from other cultivars that they have visited previously on the anthers of the flower they are currently visiting. Thus pollen from anthers that have been visited may be contaminated with pollen from other cultivars.
An example, of the possible confusion that may occur. Many daylily hybridizers assume that natural pods are few and far between. Some do not take precautions to prevent natural pollinations. I have a cultivar that was registered as a tetraploid. I pollinated hundreds of flowers each year with pollen from tetraploid cultivars (without safe hybridizing techniques). Pods would be set, last for a while and then abort. I did this year after year hoping to get a successful pollination. Then I did. But then as a test I tried hundreds of pollinations with pollen from diploid cultivars. Pods were set and most matured. The cultivar is probably a diploid and information in the hybridizer's printed catalogue suggests that is the case. The pod that appeared to be set by hand-pollination from a tet was most likely a natural pollination with at least some diploid pollen.

It is important to be aware that natural pollinations can occur in daylilies especially when one is looking for something that is expected to be infrequent or rare, since even in daylily cultivars that do not set natural pods at an easily visible rate, they can occur. It is also important to know depending on how pollen is collected for hybridizing that it may already be contaminated with the pollen from other cultivars.

Tina - I've no idea what other blooms were blooming at the time the open-pollination occurred. It doesn't matter anyway because any daylilies blooming at that time were all unknowns. Only the newest seedlings sowed last Fall/Winter have known parentage. But the pod parent is marked and I have a photo of the bloom. It still had the tag on the scape and the seeds were ripe so I collect just two plump seeds. This plant was one of the earlier blooming daylilies (#9 out of 120 older seedlings that I labeled and photographed the blooms), so it might have been during a time when many of my other "nectar" plants in my yard had not started blooming yet. Which would explain the open pollination. There have been years I've had several open-pollinated seed pods on my unknown seedlings. But I believe that was the year that I had hummingbirds still around .... probably a nesting RTH female. I haven't seen a late Spring/Summer hummer here in 2 years. So my open-pollination has since dropped to almost zero the past 2 years.

How viable these 2 seeds are is yet to be known, but I will be sowing them soon. I am not surprised at the possible parent genes on this plant. I believe the seedling to be a cross of Roses in Snow x unknown. I have many hybridized seedlings that look similar to this bloom. It is very pod and pollen fertile and the red petals with creme edging seems to show up in most of the crosses. It would be an interesting one to cross with a heavy patterned bloom like Dragonfly Dawn (I have 4 DD x DD seedlings) or Waves of Joy (I don't have those genetics). And a very hardy plant for me. And being a deep red would attract hummingbirds, but this likely happened due to a bumble or honey bee. Either way, I always find it fascinating!

I have quite a few seed pods on several different plants in my garden as a result of natural pollination. So at least in my garden it happens pretty often.

chalyse said:None of the blooms that I missed pollinating set pods from ants, bees, or butterflies even though we have a backyard metropolis of all of them. Do you know roughly how many older daylily blooms you had where two resulted in insect pollinated pods, Becky?

As mentioned, none of the blooms that I missed pollinating set pods from insects, though ants especially are all over them all the time. But, my question was seeking the rate of insect pollinations within a group of roughly estimated blooms, and thank you Becky for responding.

Thanks, Seed, for mentioning your natural pollinations. Can you give a rough estimate of overall percentage?

Tina - I have similar pill boxes that I am using for my stored pollen. Thanks for sharing those photos.

Maurice - Your reply makes perfect sense and probably very accurate! I do have spinx moths at night that are all over my garden because I have a lot of night blooming plants. I get an abundance of seeds from most of my night-bloomers.

Seedfork - Do you have hummingbirds or lots of bees?

Tina - Sorry. I misunderstood what you were asking. When I used to get a number of open-pollination from insects/hummingbirds ... I'd guess about 10-15% rate. Not high, but enough to notice some of the plants were producing pods/seeds. And I would venture to say that the viability of those seeds were about 95%. That was before I started hand-pollinating them myself for hybridizing purposes. When I did it, the success rate was much higher. Probably 90-95%.

Also, that lower open-pollination pod rate was probably due to the fact that NOT all of my daylilies produced nectar. I think some do and some don't. The bees know and hummers figure it out pretty quickly. I've never seen a butterfly on any daylily blooms.

chalyse,
The best I can estimate how many seed pods I get from natural pollination compared to the total number of blooms would be a very rough estimate at best. Thinking about the total number of plants and the total number of blooms on each of those plants, I would come up with a pretty large number of blooms. Comparing that number to the very few seed pods resulting from natural pollination I would guess less than 5 per cent.