Does anyone have experience with breeding the different color forms of L. henryi with each other? I have L. henryi var. citrinum 'Ypsilanti' and the standard orange form of L. henryi. Does anyone know if the yellow form breeds as a true recessive? For instance, this past year I crossed 'Ypsilanti' with a strong, stiff stemmed L. henryi and am growing the seeds. My assumption is that the yellow color is recessive and that all the of the seedlings will be the standard orange color. And if I cross two of these seedlings, I would guess I will get 25% yellow and 75% orange in the F2 cross. Can anyone confirm with experience that this is the case? Also wondering if anyone has experience with L. rosthornii crossed with the yellow henryi and if the color genetics is the same as for within L. henryi crosses? Just to be clear, I am not considering the influence of trumpets here, just the pure species crosses within henryi or crosses between henryi & rosthornii.

Thanks!
Patrick

I guess I naively assumed someone on here would have played around with these types of crosses. Based on the lack of response either no one has or no one is interested in this.

Oh, I'm very interested in the crossings you are proposing and am eager to see the results as well. I've just been too busy with the priorities of my own breeding projects to experiment unless there is a direct need to a project. Plenty of L. henryi material of all kinds around here, no excuse there; there's just not enough time. Keep me posted on this one. :smily:,

Edit P.S. I would agree on your presumption 25% yellow, 75% orange or thereabout with the F2.

Sorry Patrick, no experience here with the primary crosses you describe. Although... I have grown someone else's rosthornii/henryi/citrinum hybrids from seed to flower. I'll have a look for the details.

Interested in the conversation, Patrick but have no experience to add to it.

So, the seed I sowed was ((L. rosthornii x L. henryi) x L. henryi citrinum) x ((L. rosthornii x L. henryi) x L. henryi citrinum) and the orange:yellow ratio of the resulting plants that flowered was around 3:1 I don't know what colour the parents (or parent, if was selfed), were. The yellow seedling (yes, only four made it to adulthood and the orange ones are the weaklings) has a faint, sweet fragrance too.

I did use pollen from that yellow seedling on TallBoy, but now we're into the realm of orienpets. Just for interest anyway; 'TallBoy' (henryi x oriental 'Valley Sundust') is ordinary old henryi orange. The progeny of the cross have been split 50/50 orange/yellow. Four examples of each, total 8 seedlings flowered.

Thanks for the replies folks.

Della - your data from the rosthornii/henryi crosses shows the expected ratio of yellow/orange seedlings if the yellow were indeed recessive. Also interesting data on the OT cross to Tall Boy - not sure what to think of that as it would not be clear how the genetics work in these wide crosses. I would have expected all of the latter cross to be orange colored and not a 50/50 mix...

Thanks!
Patrick

Oops! Just removed an excess 'x' in my post. 'Valley Sundust'.

I was surprised too - very happily - to get half yellow progeny from that cross.

Patrick I have not done much myself but have just recently planted seeds of L. Henryi var citrinum x Dellas yellow ((rosthornii x Henryi) x Henryi var citrinum). Will let you know in a few years how they pan out!

Thanks Joe! More data is always good. Based on what she shared, I would expect all of these to be yellow flowered. If I understand correctly, I think your seeds are L. henryi var citrinum x yellow seedling from (((L. rosthornii x L. henryi) x L. henryi var citrinum) x ((L. rosthornii x L. henryi) x L. henryi var citrinum)))?

The cross I made was with L. henryi var. citrinum 'Ypsilanti' & L. henryi from Jim Ault. Jim Ault's L. henryi came from Eddie McRae and is a very large/tall/strong stem. I made the cross both ways and am growing both groups of seeds. The wrinkle on this is that I am playing with treating buds with a Surflan/lanolin paste for the purpose of trying to induce the treated buds to breed as if they are tetraploids (produce unreduced gametes). I made this cross with only 1 flower from each plant and the buds were treated at a small size with this paste. There was some evidence that the buds were affected by the treatment and so there is the possibility that there could be a range of diploid, triploid, & tetraploid seedlings from this cross. The pod on Ypsilanti was a huge pod and was full of VERY large seed but the pod on the Ault henryi was not that different and the seed looked pretty typical and there was very little viable seed in the pod. I am excited to see what comes of this - I am expecting typical orange flowered seedlings but there could be some polyploids. It will likely be several seasons before I know what the outcome is. I didn't do a control for the experiment (didn't make the same cross on untreated buds) so I don't have anything to compare the seedlings to other than each other. I recognize that if I successfully produced tetraploid seedlings from this cross and intercrossed them that I would expect only 1 in 16 seedlings to be yellow [(1/4)^2].

Yes Patrick you are correct! I call it Della yellow for short! Interesting treating buds. I have never heard of that before. So are you putting polyploid pollen on these treated buds? Please explain this further.

Joebass said:Interesting treating buds. I have never heard of that before. So are you putting polyploid pollen on these treated buds? Please explain this further.

The science behind what I am trying to do is not new. There have been several research reports published related to trying to produce unreduced gametes in Lilium by treating the buds at an early stage with different methods (colchicine injection, heat treatment, nitrous oxide pressured gas, caffeine solution injection). The idea is to disrupt the normal meiosis process going on inside the bud such that some of the eggs & pollen formed will have 2x the base number of chromosomes. The research is typically done using cultivars that are considered sterile and often the result of a wide cross - like Black Beauty. The reason for this is that if you get any fertility it is very likely that it resulted from unreduced gametes so you know you have been successful.

I started playing around with this a few years ago and it was sort of an off-shoot of something else I was tinkering with. My original project was to mix hormones in with lanolin to treat buds on wide crosses to see if it helped achieve a viable cross - there was a research article written back in the 50's on this by Emsweller. So ended up mixing up a batch of this lanolin paste with some Surflan (Oryzalin) and treated a few different buds of lilies just to see what it would do. I was initially just trying to see if it would kill the buds or have any affect. What I found was that for most treated buds they continued to grow and develop and open but there was a noticeable difference in the petal texture and flower form - that was two years ago. Last year I did a larger experiment and put it on lots more buds and intentionally made crosses with the buds to see what would happen. Based on the results I do believe I am getting some unreduced gametes. The kinds of crosses I made last summer were across the board including:
2N treated x 2N treated (Orientals, Aurelians, & OT)
2N treated x 4N (Oriental x OT)
4N x 2N treated (OT x Oriental)
3N treated x 4N (OT x OT)
4N x 3N treated (OT x OT)
On many of these crosses I did Embryo Rescue as they were wide crosses low probability crosses. For the 2N crosses intersectional crosses I just harvest seed and am growing them normally - the L. henryi var. citrinum treated x L. henryi Ault treated was this sort of cross.

There are a few embryo rescue explants I am excited about that came from this. The first was Casa Blanca treated bud x Mr. Job (Griesbach 4N fertile OT). It is possible this seedling will just be a triploid - either way could be an interesting lily. The other cross is from Scarlet Delight (4N OT) x mixed oriental pollen from treated buds. I had quite a few embryos from this cross but only one grew. Again it is possible that this was formed from diploid pollen rather than tetra pollen but I won't know until it grows out.

In all this, the thing that was very encouraging to me was that I treated many buds on my diploid Black Beauty and it only set pods on the treated buds and only with pollen from treated buds of diploid Orientals - all the other pods didn't even form. I didn't end up with any seed from these crosses but the fact that it tried to set some pods was encouraging. The other thing I noticed is that the pollen on treated buds looked different. I treated a wide variety of OT's that would be considered to have mostly sterile pollen and there was a definite difference in color & texture of the pollen from treated buds. I need to figure out how to look at pollen under my microscope to get some real data. I have been coached how to do this but haven't been able to make it work yet - I need to invest some time in this as it will help validate if this is working.

For the crosses I did between two treated diploids, there is likely a larger portion that would just be normal diploid. I would hope for some triploids and even a few tetraploids from these crosses.

I am excited about the prospects of these experiments. Being able to produce tetraploid seedlings directly from crossing diploid cultivars would help to increase the diversity in the tetraploid breeding lines. The alternative has been doing polyploid conversions on cultivars which is a slow and low probability process and then the converted cultivars tend to be short lived based on feedback from others who have been down that path.

I attached a picture of the pod from Ypsilanti from this cross. I haven't seen a pod this big on any of my henryi crosses before. Pod size is just one indication and not a smoking gun.

dellac said:So, the seed I sowed was ((L. rosthornii x L. henryi) x L. henryi citrinum) x ((L. rosthornii x L. henryi) x L. henryi citrinum) and the orange:yellow ratio of the resulting plants that flowered was around 3:1..............

I did use pollen from that yellow seedling on TallBoy, but now we're into the realm of orienpets. Just for interest anyway; 'TallBoy' (henryi x oriental 'Valley Sundust') is ordinary old henryi orange. The progeny of the cross have been split 50/50 orange/yellow. Four examples of each, total 8 seedlings flowered.

auratum said: I would have expected all of the latter cross to be orange colored and not a 50/50 mix...

(cutting quotes down to the relevant parts) I maybe shouldn't respond since I've just woken up and have sleepy eyes but....from what I'm seeing I'd expect 50/50.

I'm assuming diploid.

Tallboy would carry a dominant orange and possibly a nothing relevant from the oriental. The genes likely don't line up perfectly in wide (and often species) crosses so the corresponding gene loci for the orange colour could be for something else entirely or just be junk DNA in orientals that doesn't do much/anything. (I may not have explained that well, paraphasing, the specific gene location for colour in one species often won't be in the same location in another species, can be if the colour gene is shared by common ancestors but if the colour came about after the species split chances are they'll be in different locations)

If yellow is recessive, then the pollen parent would have two yellows

the 4 outcomes of that gene pair (O = dom orange, y = recessive yellow, ? = possible not relevant gene for colour from oriental side)
Oy, ?y
Oy, ?y

50/50

Beyond the orange/yellow difference was there any other obvious differences. Like was Lilium auratum var. platyphyllum influence obvious in anything?

Very interesting Patrick. I may have to contact you about embryo rescue. I'd really like to learn. Also can you give a short version of the unreduced gametes stuff? I thought in most wide crosses that one of the parents contributes 2N instead of 1 and you end up with triploids. By the way, you are really bringing a bunch of cool ideas to the board, (not that others aren't) so please feel free to go into details and share. Good stuff.

Protoavis - thanks for your comments. The other thing that is not clear is if Tall Boy was breeding like a diploid or tetraploid. From what I understand, it have been fertile when crossed with both and so there is the complexity of not only the genetic diversity but also potentially from polyploidy.

Joe - feel free to contact me on the embryo rescue stuff. People have been extremely helpful to me in helping me get started many years ago when I first started with this and more recently when I dusted things off and started again recently. I would be glad to share what I know. I will post separately on the unreduced gametes.

I have to catch up on the fantastic posts in this thread! Protoavis, when I get the chance to catch up I'd like to respond to your post but start another thread for that discussion.

Patrick, I wish my father, Leslie Woodriff was alive, your questions and the replies from folks would have been so dear to his heart... Black Beauty and White Henryii were two of his babies He lived for his lilies and was so far before his time... Thank you all for continuing his beautiful work...
I live in Alaska now and have some of his babies that I dig up every fall and replant every spring..
Betty

Betty, your father is among the most legendary and important lily hybridizers of all time. I was one of the people who received bulbs from Dr. Greisbach's now retired breeding program that used two of your fathers great hybrids. Feel free to lend us some stories about your father. I believe your brother Alan also came onto the site a few months ago. I'm sure we would all love to hear stories and techniques from you all as well as your growing interests. Thanks. - Joe

to NGA and to this forum, Betty!

Hello Betty! How wonderful that you can see your father's work live on!