I should have pointed out that if the sectors are genetic they would be evidence of what are called somatic mutations, meaning changes in the genes that occurred in the body of the plant rather than in the sexual development (in the gametes - pollen and ovules). Also that in plants, more or less unlike animals, somatic mutations can be inherited. So if a flower shows a sector on the petals, sepals, etc., then using pollen from the stamen attached to the sectored petal or sepal has a chance of producing seedlings that carry the new mutation throughout their bodies. However, to see that mutation in the seedlings one would have to make the appropriate types of crosses.

Even if the sector was genetic it can be quite difficult and laborious to produce a plant that shows the new mutation. It is always much easier to do this in diploids rather than in tetraploids. Producing a plant that is homozygous (pure breeding) for the new mutation would usually involve growing several hundred first generation seedlings from pollen of the sectored petal or sepal and then making 10 to 20 seedlings by self-pollinations from each one of the first generation seedlings. This in itself is difficult in daylilies since most diploids are self-incompatible. Self-pollinations fail and daylilies suffer from high inbreeding depression so any seedlings produced from successful self-pollinations tend to die or are weak. Far more than 10 to 20 seedlings would have to be grown from each first generation seedling in tetraploids.

Didn't know that selfing a diploid often fails. I have never tried it myself so good to know this!!!

By self pollinating do you mean same flower to same flower? --A lot of this is way over my head, but I'd be willing to give pollination a shot if I have anything like this again.

Self pollinating is same flower to same flower or any flower of a cultivar to any flower of the same cultivar. So if I had two clumps of Stella de Oro blooming and each clump had many scapes and each scape had many flowers then pollen from any of the Stella flowers put on any of the Stella flowers would be a self-pollination (whether those were flowers on the same or different scapes or from the same or different clumps, etc.).

Selfing most diploids fails but they are tricksters. When a daylily is selfed it will set a pod (at the normal rate for the fertility of the pod parent and of the pollen parent). So if 'Barbara Mitchell' x 'Lullaby Baby' sets pods 60% of the time and 'Lullaby Baby' x 'Barbara Mitchell' sets pods 70% of the time then we would guess that 'Barbara Mitchell' selfed would set a pod 60% of the time and 'Lullaby Baby' selfed would set a pod 70% of the time (there are mathematical ways to estimate a predicted fertility for pod and pollen parents but I am not using those here).

The petals, sepals etc fall off the selfed flower and the pod starts to enlarge. Then within a few weeks the pods are aborted. Some diploids will accept their own pollen, for example, 'Stella de Oro' and the common lemon lily, Hemerocallis lilioasphodelus and produce mature pods with good seeds. Tetraploids are more forgiving and a greater proportion of tetraploids will accept their own pollen successfully, that is they are self-fertile and self-compatible. For diploids the seedlings from successful self-pollinations are less fit than those from cross-pollinations. In tetraploids the fitness of the seedlings from self-pollinations is not so poor as that in diploids.

Looking back at my records for the last two years, I've done a handful of diploid self-crosses that yielded about 10-30% pods that led to viable seeds-to-seedlings, depending on cultivar (and your mileage may vary, according to many variables). A pretty good rate for something that is not supposed to happen, I think.

None of mine have bloomed yet, as I don't follow the irrigation/fertilization rates of a commercial garden. But they are all healthy and a good size. I'm looking forward to continuing the process of doing some more self-pollinating dabs each year.

The top half of my potting-bench is almost all self-pollinated dips, with a couple of self-pollinated tets mixed in.

Thanks for the info. admmad. Suppose the chances of getting solid color splits on a cultivar would be almost impossible, but really neat if someone could do it. --Know I've read where Pitter Patter (really neat spotted dl) doesn't pass the spots on to kids, so it was probably just one seedling out of hundreds? that had that trait.

Pitter Patter does pass its spots even in first generation...it just took a pollen dabber who decided to try it out even though others cast doubts on them. Here it was crossed with a split-color cultivar:



And, there are others already working on the 50% two-color splits, as well. You might be in good company, if you joined in with those pioneering spirits. It can be daunting for some to endlessly be told something is highly unlikely, but for others, the process of exploration and experimentation can be quite successful and enlightening!

chalyse said:Looking back at my records for the last two years, I've done a handful of diploid self-crosses that yielded about 10-30% pods that led to viable seeds-to-seedlings, depending on cultivar (and your mileage may vary, according to many variables). A pretty good rate for something that is not supposed to happen, I think.

Unfortunately, unless you used safe hybridizing techniques it is quite possible that few of the self-pollinations that were successful were only self-pollinations. Daylilies do naturally cross-pollinate. How easily they cross-pollinate depends on the cultivar. For example, 'Stella de Oro' is naturally pollinated easily. 'Ophir' is naturally pollinated easily as is 'Tetrina's Daughter', etc. Natural cross-pollinations are done by bees, flies, earwigs, moths, butterflies, etc. Most of the Ophir natural pollinations in my garden are self-pollinations - they abort. Most of the Tetrina's Daughter natural pollinations are self-pollinations - they abort. I would expect that Stella natural pollinations are a mixture of self and cross pollinations with cross pollinations in the majority.

If you used safe hybridizing techniques - the bud is forced open before it starts to open by itself and is pollinated with pollen that could not have been itself contaminated by insect visits; it is then closed and wrapped in something (such as a paper bag) that prevents insects from entering - then the success rates could be attributable to self-pollinations. Otherwise they are open to debate as to whether they were due to hybridizer self-pollinations or natural cross-pollinations. On the other hand, the successes could be with specific diploid cultivars that can be reasonably assumed to be self-compatible such as those having H. minor in their ancestry or H. lilioasphodelus, etc.,

Although little is impossible where genetics and living organisms are involved, due to the random nature of the mechanisms for making sectors it is unlikely that 50:50 colour splits could be stabilized. Genetically, it is relatively common to get random sectoring to be passed on to offspring.

Wonderful information about oddities on this thread! And *love* the info about Pitter Patter's spots, and that hybridizers are working with color splits. --Off to go look for some Pitter Patter kids now...

I would have thought that the process of forcing a bloom open, pollinating it before it opens naturally then sealing it up again would in itself be enough to cause a very low success rate.

Seedfork said:I would have thought that the process of forcing a bloom open, pollinating it before it opens naturally then sealing it up again would in itself be enough to cause a very low success rate.

It might until the experimenter becomes expert at doing so, but safe hybridizing techniques are used by plant geneticists and professional plant breeders without running into very low success rates due to the techniques used. The test for self compatibility and self-incompatibility should always have the control for the damage done by the technique by repeating the technique but instead of self-pollinating the cultivar's flowers simply cross-pollinating them.

Part A is to self-pollinate cultivar A x cultivar A using safe hybridizing techniques and record the success rate.
Part B is to cross-pollinate cultivar A x cultivar B using safe hybridizing techniques and record the success rate.
All plants of cultivar A and cultivar B must be treated in exactly the same way both before, throughout and after the test pollinations.
If the success rate is normal and much greater in Part B than it is in Part A then there is self-incompatibility.
The two rates would be compared using statistical analyses to determine if any differences seen were significant or just due to chance.

Other tests would need to be conducted to make certain cultivar A was pod-fertile and that it was pollen fertile and that cultivar B was pollen fertile. As well the tests would need to determine just how fertile A pods, A pollen and B pollen were when used in the tests.

The tests would all need to be repeated with cultivar A and cultivar C and so on until a sufficiently large number of diploid cultivars had been tested in different combinations to make a generalization reasonable.

Imagine using safe hybridizing techniques on tomato flower buds and other small flowered plant species. It can be done successfully at reasonable success rates as I can testify as I had do just that during a summer job when I was a student many years ago.

Toru Arisumi, a USDA plant geneticist did many crosses to investigate the genetics of red-flowers in daylilies. This is what he wrote in an article about his findings, "A direct and theoretically desirable method of studying segregating populations was to self the progenies obtained in Group III. These plants, however, produced little or no seed when selfed, and the few seedlings obtained from them did not survive long enough to produce flowers. I have grown a few selfed seedlings from other crosses that were as vigorous as their parents but these were exceptions rather than the typical inbred seedlings. Stout found that incompatibilities often prevent selfing and that selfed progenies are "usually so weak from loss of heterosis that they are worthless"

There are sometimes other ways to practice safe hybridizing. For example, one can hybridize in greenhouses that are kept insect-free. One can try removing petals, sepals and stamens from buds before they open naturally (removing landing places for flying insects), pollinating them and then protecting the style and stigma with straws or other devices, etc.

I found this interesting for me as I just did my first dabbing of pollen, 'My Path x My Path' a dip, and now it is loaded with beautiful seed pods. Whether or not they will be any seeds and grow any plants is still in question.

Seedfork said:I found this interesting for me as I just did my first dabbing of pollen, 'My Path x My Path' a dip, and now it is loaded with beautiful seed pods. Whether or not they will be any seeds and grow any plants is still in question.

How old is the oldest pod (how long ago was its flower pollinated)?

One year I self-pollinated 17 Prairie Blue Eyes flowers and they all set pods and started to develop. Over the next few weeks every one of the pods aborted.

Not long enough to know yet, but there are nearly 20 nice seed pods.

Those are a nice size and I would not expect them to abort and I would expect them to have seeds within them.

My Path (Joiner, 1989) height 26in (66cm), bloom 6.5in (16.5cm), season MLa, Rebloom, Evergreen, Diploid, Fragrant, Rose blend with green throat. (Golden Scroll × Pat Mercer)

Assuming (reasonably) that your self-pollinations worked (especially as there were at least 20 of them), then either one or both of the two parents 'Golden Scroll' and 'Pat Mercer' are also likely to be self-compatible. The genetics of daylily self-compatibility and incompatibility is complex but they should be inheritable. I do not grow 'Pat Mercer' but I do have 'Golden Scroll'. If it blooms this year I will try some self-pollinations. Plant geneticists prefer self-compatible parents in their crosses so that the F2 and other crosses are simpler to make and analyze. I am always on the look-out for diploid cultivars that are self-compatible especially in flower colours other than yellow.

I also follow the general standard of practice that I learned from all the helpful commercial and home hybridizers who've documented their work on the internet - removing anthers and, for me at least, identifying parentage. Though I agree that it is not possible to always be sure of viable fertility rates or a seedling's parentage, most daylilies would be thrown into question if random insect pollination were the prevailing mode of genetic transmission. My experience with self crossing is like Seeds, with great results up to 30% of the time on both older and newer varieties of all colors. On the other hand, perhaps I have missed seeing that modern hybridizer's are truly using a "clean room" technique in common practice - I would cherish some linked pointers to their visual documentation of it. Even without clean room techniques, with the great diversity and complexity of today's cultivars, most registered daylilies do seem to carry some resemblance to any stated parentage, in those dwindling cases where parentage information is provided or seedling-parent names documented.

I'll be posting pictures of my parent-and-self-offsprings by next summer (fingers crossed!). Though I started out closer to full-on "clean room" technique my first year, it hasn't seem to differ in result for the few cultivars that I approached more casually. And, the process really does not seem to have been implemented much outside a lab, based on the extremely high number of recent cultivars in the past couple of decades that have unknown parentage or parentage that dates only a few generations back. Though the practices that lead to massive loss of parental information can perhaps create personal control over access to information about the hybridizer's own cultivar choices, it forever wipes out important relevant information about health, performance, and background information like color, form, and historical continuity. With thousands of crosses each year, I can understand why there would be less detailed information kept, but from what I understand most commercial hybridizers segregate each cultivar in its own area, and pollinate with one pollen cross at a time, a simple process to document.

I've also had no luck with Prairie Blue Eyes in any kind of dip-crossing (if pods set they abort) and it seems most of its offspring were produced pre-1980's. If I were more interested in it as a parent cultivar I'd try what I did when Dixie Land Band produced no viable pods ... cross it with the "wrong" ploidy and learn that it really could not be called a dip, at least not the fans in my garden. It was quite fond, however, of tets and made tons of seedlings that are among those growing on my potting bench. I'll assume those red "dip" cultivars are not of interest to geneticists, but they are gracing this garden with a lot of interesting experiences. The more we learn the less we may know, it sometimes seems, but the more we encourage and try, the more things tend to advance and benefit us all.

I found this oddity in my garden this morning. Hemerocallis "Karen Sue" with 5 petals, 12 pollen stems, and 2 complete individual pistils. Underneath the flower, it actually looked as if two separate daylilies had grown together. Have not seen this before.

Very odd, but also very beautiful.

Welcome to ATP, Pandorasbox! I seem to remember there might be a daylily by that name.

Pandorasbox! What a lovely blossom you have! I think that may be what they call a "fused" flower in daylilies. Thanks so much for sharing that picture - I sure hope you might upload it to the database - it would be the first example of it here for Karen Sue.

Pandorasbox
I like the white mid ribs it looks like star.