Glen, as far as I remember they tried various degrees of peeling. The black coating (a substance called phytomelan) is fairly easy to scratch off with one's fingernail although occasionally a seed will fly across the room in the process (I've tried it). Underneath the black layer is a brown papery layer. That can be scraped off as well but I don't recall its being necessary. Peeling the seeds does hasten germination if the seeds are not stratified and are still dormant. A downside is that, in theory at least, by removing the protective black layer the seeds/seedlings become more vulnerable to infection until they've grown past that stage. That did happen when I tried it I seem to recall. Mike Huben experimented with shaking daylily seeds in a jar of sandpaper to remove enough of the seed coat to break seed dormancy and found that it worked for him but I'd give the same caveat for that method too. It's interesting that daylily seed coats are not impervious to water yet removing the coat has an effect on germination, thus daylily seeds respond to either stratification (chilling) or scarification (abrading of the seed coat), or soaking in diluted hydrogen peroxide, while soaking in plain water appears to have a negative effect on germination.
