Hello everyone!
I have three strange buds on a seedling that bloomed this year for the first time.
There's one of this bud on each scape.
The oldest is at least a week old. It stays in this way, green on the outside, very clear in the inside (for what I can see) while open flowers are peachy color and it doesn't open.
Other buds get mature and open correctly.
What could it be?
Many thanks in advance for your help!

You had gall midge last year, Sabrina, have you checked for that?

Sue, I remember about gall midge but I remember it was affecting all the buds on the plant... also, this is a seedling at her first blooms I'd thought it could be something related to her young age. I will wear glove and go outside immediately to check. Oh, and glasses too, since my sight has significantly got worse

@sooby, Sue, as always you were right. Gall midge. I cut the three buds and threw them in a plastic bag and sealed it.
There was another suspicious bud on another plant, cut it and chiecked but it seemed fine. The past year, apart from throwing away some buds, the problem was not so big, I hope to keep it under control this year too. Still don't know where it came from.
Thank you!

Good, at least those little horrors won't live to reproduce! Hopefully you can keep their numbers from increasing too much by picking off the affected buds as you see them. Sad that you have to deal with this though, it's one pain-in-the-neck daylily pest and it appears to be spreading in North America as well.

I have to avoid to let bud fall in the ground, right?
Is it a cross-species pest or is it a daylily specific pest? Because as I told you in the past no one has daylilies here apart from a neighbour that has fulva. The past year the buds were looking fine.

It's daylily specific as far as is known, but it has been reported from Italy. Either it just naturally happened upon your garden or it came in on a plant you bought, most likely one in a pot because it's harder for it to hitch-hike on a bare-root plant unless it has scapes. It doesn't affect late-flowering daylilies, it only has one generation of larvae a year, but what constitutes late-flowering for the midge in your area I do not know.

I never bought potted daylilies and it started the third or second year they were well established in the garden. I read about late flowering DLs not being affected, most of mine will bloom in 15-20 days, that seedling and Stella are the only one flowering now.

I guess you just got lucky and it found your daylilies, then. It's been in Europe for well over 100 years, and that's just since it was first reported, it could even be longer than that. It has been even harder to explain how it got to the west coast of Canada, presumably from Europe!

So you've never purchased a daylily in a pot? Or with soil on the roots? Or with scapes?

sooby said:
So you've never purchased a daylily in a pot? Or with soil on the roots? Or with scapes?

Actually my first DL, Stella de Oro, was a small potted plant I bought in a common garden center.
Planted in 2013 in the left side of the garden. Gall midge appears in the right side of the garden. The garden is only 8 meters long and 3 wide.
Then in spring 2014 I bought ten plants from a nursery (www.hemerocallis.it), they came bare roots and without scapes.
The rest are all born from seeds.

One of the plants I bought in 2014 had gall midge in 2017, so maybe yes, it has just got lucky and found my DLs

I think you'd also have to consider the potted Stella. It could take a few years for a population of the midges to build up enough from a few in a pot sufficiently that there would be damage bad enough to notice. It doesn't look like you have a lot of them even now since only a few buds are affected. They can fly so I don't think the side of the garden is important.

So why Stella is not affected? I would think it would be the first. Or maybe not, since the insects fly?

I have no idea. Maybe they just found the other one first, or the buds were at the stage they want when Stella's weren't? Or there's something about Stella that they don't like. Is the affected one taller?

Yes, the affected one is taller, but it's really far from Stella, the ones surrounding Stella are not affected.

Buds were quite at same stage on both plants.
I also read somewhere that yellow dailylies are more affected, I don't know why.

It has been reported that yellow ones are more susceptible. Being a different colour is not a guarantee they won't be affected though. Yellow is the colour used for sticky traps because it attracts certain insects so maybe gall midges are the same way in their colour preferences.

This was a very informative exchange about gall midge.

Sue, I can't think of anything more yellow than Stella!

There's another cultivar with buds still at pea stage that looks suspicious. The buds are really small but some open in a sort of three stunted leaves, so I removed them. This is really near the gall midge champion of the year. I will keep it under control.

Update: I saw stunted buds on Fulva, in the neighbour's garden. Actually, it's not directly close to mine, there's another very piece of garden in the middle. I wanted to say something to my neighbour but windows are all closed maybe she's not at home.
But Fulva blooms opened after my seedling's blooms, so maybe the problem starts here?

It could be either, it could have found the fulvas first a few years back and then flew to your garden or vice versa. The problem is that however it got there, you both have it now and it doesn't matter which order they flower in. Perhaps you can ask your neighbour if you can go in and remove the infested buds for her, which will keep the numbers down in your garden also?

I never see my neighbour she apparently lives closed in the house. I don't want to enter her garden without permission. But all the flowers on the Fulva looks fine, now.

I killed a bud without any reason. I was looking at this bud, it was slow to open, really clear in color, so I cut it and opened it.
It was perfectly healthy, of a beautiful lemon yellow color... so I realized I messed with tags in the garden

I found a distorted bud on Stella for the first time and throw it away.
There are seedlings with blooms, they are taking a bit to open but weather is not good so I'll wait a few days before killing them.