"X" makes me think of how we write the parentage of daylilies. When writing out the parents of a daylily the pod (female) parent is listed first followed by an "X" ( which stands for pollinated by) then the pollen parent (male). An example of this is the parentage of 'Wonder of it All' written as 'Mandalay Bay Music' X 'Wonders Never Cease' and read as 'Mandalay Bay Music' pollinated by 'Wonders Never Cease'.


Parentage involving seedlings, or sometimes more than two registered daylilies, are written with the two parents for each additional cross written in parenthesis. In the parentage of 'Julie Newmar' the parentage is written as (sdlg x 'Fortune's Dearest')X 'Gerda Brooker'. The pod parent is a seedling from the cross of sdlg X 'Fortune's Dearest'. This seedling was then pollinated by 'Gerda Brooker'.

A longer parentage may look like this when written out....
'Larry's Twilight Bite' from parents (( Sun Bear x Julie Newmar) x Sword Dancer) X Rosy Spiketail shows the parentage of the two seedlings involved in this cross. The first seedling with parentage of 'Sun Bear' X 'Julie Newmar'.
A second seedling ( Sun Bear x Julie Newmar) X 'Sword Dancer' that was then crossed with 'Rosy Spiketail'.

I can find no reference in daylilies for the use of an upper case "X" or lower case "x" when writing parentage, but somewhere over the years I had learned that an upper case "X" was used to indicate the final crossing involving the two direct parents. (Both upper and lower case are used in the ATP database - 'Asheville Skyline' uses a lower case "x" and 'Asheville White Winged Dove' a upper case "X" for the same cross of 'Destined to See' X 'Julie Newmar'. The upper/lower case writing does not apply in the ATP database either.)
This ended up taking a bit longer than I wanted ...I like reading parentage and got sidetracked...

X-mas in July!!!!
Nothing beats the "x"-citment of waking up during July and knowing there will be cultivars with FFO's and new seedling blooms to see.

Using the upper case X to divide the maternal/paternal sides makes reading a cross involving a series of seedlings much easier to read, IMO.

Hmm... well, my term for today was going to be xyzlacatosis, which has the dictionary definition of:

struck with knowledge that there are few words in the English language beginning with x, y, and z

However, in a womanly struggle to play along, I humbly submit the term eXtra, as in:

eXtra tepals, in polymerous daylilies:






eXtra petal tissue, as in petaloids on peony type doubles









eXtra petal whorls, as in hose-in-hose doubles




eXtra petal tissue, as in cresting (on cristates)

My "X" word will be Xylem, the water conducting tissues in the veins of a daylily.
http://www.daylilies.org/ahs_d...

Xeriscape

https://www.google.com/search?...

While daylilies do need plentiful water to look their best, they can survive short periods of drought and return the following year to thrive. They require far less water than many common garden plants, especially annuals.

http://www.daylilies.org/Dayli...

AHS lists only 23 dl registered whose names begin with 'x'.

http://www.daylilies.org/Dayli...
Maddox has 53 dl registered


http://www.daylilies.org/Dayli...
Alexander has 90 dl registerd-looks like mostly in the 1950's

http://www.daylilies.org/Dayli...
352 dl are listed as registered by Saxton over the span of some years-

http://www.daylilies.org/Dayli...
Maxwell-272

Xanthorrhoeaceae. That has to be the worst X word to do with daylilies! It's the plant family that daylilies were placed in under APG III (APG is the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group), in the subfamily Hemerocallidoideae. Before that, and after having been removed from the lily family, Liliaceae, Hemerocallis were placed in the family Hemerocallidaceae.

In an article entitled: Proposal to conserve the family name Asphodelaceae (Spermatophyta: Magnoliidae: Asparagales), it was stated "Many scientists, amateur botanists and the general public are obviously not in favour of using the relatively obscure Xanthorrhoeaceae s.l., which in addition is not only difficult to pronounce but is also often misspelt."

I heartily concur with that comment!