bobjax said:My very rooky opinion.... On my short crosses, so far, I haven't gotten much that impressed me.
From a long cross, I got a few heart stoppers. I often wondered if I only did 5 to 10 seeds would I been lucky enough to get these few special seedlings. I once asked whether you can make a judgment from just a few seeds. Gossard replied that he got Heavenly United We Stand from a few seeds. In my opinion that was good luck
The basic underlying assumption whenever anyone makes a cross should be that the seedlings will be the average of the two parents in their characteristics. If that is the actual goal of the hybridizer then a few seeds
may be all that are necessary. Otherwise, the
more seedlings produced from a cross the better the chance of getting a seedling that shows the characteristics that the hybridizer would like.
The further the hybridizer's goal is from the average of the two parents, the
more seedlings will need to be produced to have a good chance of succeeding.
For a
very few characteristics, one
might find that the seedling characteristics are biased toward one or the other parent. For example, if you cross a deep dark purple flowered daylily with a light flowered daylily there
may tend to be more seedlings with darker purple coloured flowers than lighter coloured flowers. What happens will depend on the exact genotypes of both parents. Small numbers of seedlings are always subject to the strong effects of random flukes of chance. Large numbers of seedlings are
more likely to produce what is expected genetically.
