Viewing post #664097 by daylily

Sharon said:If you have a cup of flour and you add a spoon full of sugar to it, you no longer have that original cup of flour. You have a whole new cup of something, but not the original flour. If you take out a spoonful of the mix, you still have flour+sugar, another spoonful might give you more sugar than flour or more flour than sugar, but it will still contain the mix, never again will it be the original cup of flour because the grains of sugar have become a part of that flour. Same when you cross two different daylilies. One might show more of one parent than the other, but it won't ever be simply either parent again. Most likely you can add genes but you can't take them away, at least that's true for most of us.

Sharon, I have never heard it put that way, but it makes perfect sense.

Sharon said:And now because of people like Char and Juli, Tink, Hemlady, Betty, Spunky and numerous others who hybridize, I'm learning more every day.

Thanks Sharon … who knows… one of these days you might start dabbing pollen ….

I've learned so much from Maurice's posts here, as well as from his AHS Journal articles. The Journal is a wealth of information, as is the AHS Email Robin. I have great respect and admiration for people like Maurice, spending all the years doing research, and am thankful when they take they time to share some of what they have learned with us.