I agree with what is being said here about expectations, seller's responsibility, as well as the buyer also having a certain amount of responsibility and initiative. I would imagine that most sellers on LA are good sellers, but there are always rotten apples in every bushel. I came across one that I won't ever buy from again. None of my purchased seeds germinated. Some of the bonus seeds germinated. But I really wanted the one I bid on and won, not the bonus seeds. I've read some interesting things about this seller, so I will try to be careful of who I purchase from now. (Changing your seller name is apparently not too hard to do to erase your past.)

And let me also say that I am now sworn off ebay daylily seeds. Higher price and I am really disappointed! The seller on ebay posted a collage of amazing blooms consisting of the latest cultivars of the past 5 - 10 years. Looked great and they advertised that they were seeds that somehow were collected w/o labeling them or were accidentally mixed up so they were unknowns. Some even came sprouting, which was impressive. I bought two times from this ebay seller. The problem came when many have started blooming this year for the first time. Not one looks anything like the collage photos. Most are Plain Janes. Some even look to me like Ditchlilies. So ... no more purchasing seeds from ebay. Learned my lesson on that one! Beware!

I am glad this thread was started as I would have no idea other than reviews left by buyers if a seller was honest and prompt. Keep this thread going, please! I often refer back to it when I am considering making a bid.

I don't understand the entire seed buying business with daylilies, when they don't come true from seed.
How could you have any idea of what the seedlings are going to look like? Someone enlighten me please!
Every daylily I pull up says " Does not come true from seed".
I'll start a new thread for this.

beckygardener said: (Changing your seller name is apparently not too hard to do to erase your past.)

It may be easy to do on ebay, been along time since I've been on there to buy or sell. But the lily auction is not so easy since you have to be verified and unless you know someone who will let you use their name, address, email, and such then you can't do it.

Seedfork,
as far as wondering what the daylilies from seed may look like. It's very similar to brothers and sisters in the people world :-). Two parents will likely have children that have some similar characteristics from the parents and yet be complete individuals at the same time. ... and then again, one can sometimes wonder where the heck that kid came from !

Seedfork - I agree with what Sunny said. There should be some resemblance to the parent names listed or photos. There were NO resemblance to any of those posted. The blooms are plain. No ruffles. No large eyes. No teeth. Nothing appeared true about what the seller posted using several collages of daylily blooms as a selling point. Some look just like ditch lilies to me. And I do like ditch lilies, but that was not what I thought I was buying. For me, it was a very misleading sale. Most all grew and are now blooming, they are nothing even close to what I was expecting. I am talking about close to 50 daylilies. Ha! Not one in the bunch looks anything like the collages that were posted on ebay. Maybe I just had bad luck or maybe not .... So buyers beware! If the seeds aren't guaranteed to be from a particular parentage, then don't be surprised if the blooms don't come close to your expectations based on photos or names listed.

Michele - I have heard of one seller on LA that uses names, addresses, and accounts of different relatives. I won't buy from him/her again. But now I have to be careful when I buy from sellers I do not know. That person could turn up again using a different name. I do know that the LA does take complaints seriously. I am a seed buyer, so I am not spending major $$$s for plants. But it is still very annoying to get bum seeds. First time ever I couldn't even get 1 single seed to germinate. I typically have a 80-100% germination rate with seeds. So I seriously doubt it was a fault on my end.

I will continue to buy from LA, but never again will I buy seeds on ebay. Wished I could complain about the ebay seller! But you only have a small window of time to write reviews of a seller. It takes at least one year to get blooms here before I know what semblance of daylilies I actually have. Never again!

From what I understand, and I could be wrong, the resemblance could just be in the height of the plant, the fact that it is evergreen or not, early or late blooming, extended bloom, maybe even reblooming or not. There are probably thousands of combinations at least. But, having no experience in trying seeds and expecting a desired result, I would like to hear from others who have purchased seeds expecting a particular outcome and actually got what they were expecting. Maybe if enough people post we can get some idea of the percentage of success. I just wonder how many people actually buy daylily seed, maybe a lot more than I would expect! I have seen some beautiful daylilies grown from seed, but how much they resembled their parents and how many seedlings it took to get them I have no estimate of.

Seedfork - From my own recent experience .... out of 50 seeds that germinated, grew, and are now blooming ... some of them should have been more fancy instead of plain. Especially if you look at the photo collages posted on ebay. Yes, some may not be fancy and carry those gene traits. But with a number like 50 plants, many should have been similar to the photos or names posted! They weren't.

In many of the forum bloom threads, folks will post pictures of children of a particular daylily cultivar. You can see the resemblance in most of the blooms of the different children. Some are a surprise, but most do show similar genetic characteristics from one or both of the parents. Every seed does grow a unique plant though, no matter how similar it is to it's parents. I think doing percentages would be difficult to do because there are so many cultivars out there and some look similar to other cultivars.

The Ebay seller I got some seeds from is named "Bowmaster."
Like Becky said, by the time the seeds are mature enough to bloom, it is too late to make complaints.
I'm hoping mine come out okay,.....

I also got seeds of named parentage crosses off Ebay and I'm hoping those will be okay.
And I've gotten some named crosses off LA too.

When a seller just changes name on Ebay, all the feedback and info follows the new name.
If a seller registers a brand new name, none of the feedback follows, but of course the feedback count would start at "0."

I have gotten some daylilies off Ebay that have been fine. But I don't buy real expensive plants there either.

I bought a plant from a well known hybridizer, "no names" hybridizer or plant
Double fan.

I am a seed seller on the auction ID "gramps", and I wanted to add "for the first season, pollen" to add to the gene pool for my seed sales.
When I got the plant I could tell that it probably came from the greenhouse because of the two spent scapes's still attached with the trimmed fans, one fan was dried up showing very little green and died in less than a week, while the other fan looking a little better has finally after 3 plus weeks started to show some growth.
So I know the plant will live, but there is no way this plant will recover this season to set any type bloom.
I will buy intro's from this hybridizer in the future if I want his plants bad enough, but I will never buy them from him again.
The spent scapes are what I see at seasons end after pod harvest, which makes me believe that the plant was used in the greenhouse for hybridizing.
If I'm wrong, then he sent a pretty crappy looking plant.
Either way, never from him again.

@EdBurton I have a couple of plants that I received that way. Had still attached spent scapes. I am pretty new to daylilies so I did not know that they were probably used in a greenhouse, but that makes sense.

Sorry to hear of missing a first-season to pollinate ... and it prompted me to remember a question I've had. I would love to purchase pollen, and I assume it might be able to be dried and weather transit as well as seeds or plants do, but I never see any postings under the "pollen" category. Anyone know if it is just too time consuming for people to dry and package pollen, or is there a very low success rate with it after transit?

What I've read is the latter - that it's a mixed bag trying to mail it. Some will work and some won't.

Yea....for sure the latter. Its to bad too.

Awesome, thanks! There are no restrictions on pollen shipping through the mail here ... so, now, to find a way to encourage people to begin sharing it.

I'd consider it well worth the cost of a stamp to give it a try!

Re: Lily Auction sellers
Got some plants the end of Feb from a NC seller and the fans were small, although I didn't know then what good fans should look like, I left positive feedback.

Now all these plants from that seller have rust. We had weather here recently that was great to bring out any rust. Don't know why it didn't come out earlier or if rust was otherwise introduced to my farm, why these NC plants the only ones majorly showing it?

These plants are the only ones with the rust bumps. A few other plants in the area show only very, very tiny slight or mostly no rust at all.

If rust has arrived with a particular set of plants, it may be that there is a delay in time from when active spores would have spread, cross-infected, and show up on newer plants? By then, weather conditions may not favor as much spread, even if all arrivals had rust? Just some thoughts. I saw that happen with my carnations ... first-arriving plants were severely hit (and died, though I'll keep them in ground in case they can bounce back) while later arrivals to the garden were less impacted after being planted once our short wet season had passed.

I am guessing but it is probably impossible to control all of the rust in southern gardens. I know a lot of sellers have a disclaimer that if you are afraid of getting rust don't bid on their auctions. I have also gotten rust from a couple of southern plants but I knew that was a possibility before I bid. Our winters kill it though so I wasn't that concerned about it.

Your climate certainly is more likely to develop rust on plants. I heard that rust spores can come into your garden from 30 miles away due to the wind carrying them. I would remove as much of the infected parts as possible and spray the rest.

Cat said:@EdBurton I have a couple of plants that I received that way. Had still attached spent scapes. I am pretty new to daylilies so I did not know that they were probably used in a greenhouse, but that makes sense.

@cat In Ed's case I'm sure that is what happened is a greenhouse bloomed plant, but please don't assume all plants recieved that way are.

Not all daylilies that are sent with spent scapes have been used in the greenhouse for hybridizing. It really depends on where they came from. If from a northern garden then they would just be getting scapes most likely if not in a greenhouse so it's reasonable to assume that you would get a plant without a spent scape. If you buy from southern gardens then chances are if you get shipping during May (or even late April) or after then they may have already scaped here. Our season (when normal) is some blooms in March and then things start scaping in April for May blooms. We will have a good amount in April also.



I actually had this happen to me last year. I didn't get my plants until later since it was a northern garden and it already had dead scapes on them so in reality they could have been sent to me in early March since that is my usual requested ship date so I can get blooms to use. But my guess is they wanted to use the pollen or set pods on the blooms before sending out (of course I could be wrong also)

@tink3472 Thanks for clearing that up!

The subject of pollen, and shipping
I use about 50% frozen pollen for making seeds, and works really well for me.
The pollen I use gets frozen as soon as I can collect it and it stays that way until I'm ready to use it.
I take it out of the freezer anywhere from a half hour up to 15 minutes before planned use, this will let any moisture dissipate.
When I am done I refreeze it.
I use centrifuge tubes stuffed to almost the top of tube with cotton, I brush off pollen into the cotton until it is completely covered with the pollen, it usually takes all 6 anthers to get enough pollen to cover.
This allows me to attempt 50 plus crosses with one tube, before the fluid from the pistil makes pollen in tube useless.
I have been able to set pods with 4 year old pollen with my method as a test.
I haven't tried anything older, and I try to replace all my pollen every 2 years or less.

On to the subject of shipping pollen.
I have tried swapping pollen with a few online daylily friends during the bloom season and the results have been dismal at best.
I just don't believe that the pollen survives being in the postal system during the summer season for any length of time.
With the exception of 2 pods set in New York out of 300 odd attempts between us all the results haven't been worth the effort.
No one from the original pollen swappers asked to do it again, so that about sums up our experience

In a new test I sent pollen from Wisconsin to Texas in the middle of this last winter to see if shipping in cold to frigid temps would make a difference.
When I hear the results I will pass the info along.