The seedlings one gets from crosses with oranges depends very much on how the orange is formed in the parents.
There are three ways known to produce orange flower colours. 1) Have high concentrations of the yellow carotenoid pigments - in high concentrations these are orange. 2) Have the more orange carotenoid pigments. 3) Have the appropriate combination and concentrations of yellow carotenoid pigments with reddish anthocyanin pigments.
If a type 1 or type 2 orange daylily is crossed with a purple flowered plant I would expect that the seedlings would be mostly muddy coloured. If a type 3 orange is used in the cross then I would expect that there is a better chance that some of the seedlings will not be muddy coloured.
Mauna Loa is a type 3 orange.
Daylilies have basically two types of anthocyanin pigments, the reddish-purple cyanidins and the bluish-purple delphinidins. If the purple-flowered parent is reddish-purple rather than bluish-purple I would expect there to be a better chance that some of the offspring would not be muddy coloured.
When examined, clear purple flowered daylilies have very little carotenoid pigment; red flowered daylilies can have noticeable amounts of carotenoid pigments. I suspect that to be clear coloured and have delphindin pigments in the flower there cannot be a noticeable concentration of carotenoid pigment.
Ashwood Inferno (orange) is from two seedlings so we cannot know for certain from the pedigree what colour the parents were. One parent was from Burning Inheritance × Apache War Dance. Burning Inheritance was registered as red-orange and Apache War Dance was registered as scarlet red. I would guess that seedling parent was reddish. The other parent was from Ruffled Royalty × Thunder and Lightning. Both are registered as purples. It would be reasonable to assume that the other seedling parent was purple. Thunder and Lightning was from Study in Scarlet × Special Effects - a blood red x pink mauve. Special Effects involved Wedding Band. Thunder and Lightning may be a purple but it also carries the genetics for red from Study in Scarlet and probably cream-white (low carotenoid concentrations) from Special Effects.
It is possible that the Burning Inheritance x Apache War Dance seedling was used in a cross with Tupac Amaru to produce the purple Ashwood Smoky Joe. It is possible that the Ruffled Royalty x Thunder and Lightning seedling was used with Maxfield Parrish to produce the red Cory Tipple and is the rosy purple Sturm Und Drang.
