I planted hundreds of my seeds and now have an overabundance of seedlings under the lights. I had near-perfect germination so the pots are overflowing and I had to do some culling (ouch it hurts to kill healthy seedlings!)

In pulling them up, I noticed this little guy. It reminds me of the Two-Headed Monster from Sesame Street when my kids were little. I don't recall ever seeing this before in my seedlings.

The cross is my own, 'Lotus Position x Marque Moon'.












BTW, I tucked him back into the pot because I am curious to see what happens with this little freak.

There are several possibilities (if they survive to flowering the possibilities could be narrowed down), but for the time being it could be considered twins.

Will it produce 2 different flowers? Very interesting! Love Lotus Position by the way!

kousa said:Will it produce 2 different flowers?

@kousa
That would depend on what specifically caused what seems to be something like twinning. Sometimes, seed twins have different ploidies (not common) and if that is the case then they could have different flowers, although not necessarily.

I'm glad you tucked that one back in the dirt. It looks like twins to me!

Thank you for your answer, Maurice. I am wondering if anybody on the forum has experience growing these 'twin' seedlings out and what was the result? Did they reach maturity and bloom? Were the flowers identical? And if on the rare chance there are two different ploidies would that occur as a result of an insect pollination? I know I only used tetra pollen. Are there any statistics on how often twinning happens? I would imagine that sometimes it happens and it isn't noticed, especially when dealing with hundreds or perhaps thousands of seedlings. It definitely originated from a single seed. If the blooms that result are identical, then is that like identical twins in humans, where one egg divides in two? And if there are 2 different blooms, is that like fraternal twins? Hope I don't sound ignorant...... this is all very interesting to me!

celestialrose said:Thank you for your answer, Maurice.

@celestialrose
You are very welcome.

And if on the rare chance there are two different ploidies would that occur as a result of an insect pollination?

No, it is a rare result of the mechanism(s) of producing the twin seedlings.

Are there any statistics on how often twinning happens?

Not specifically in daylilies but in other species it is rare, for example, once every 5,000 seedlings in one species.

If the blooms that result are identical, then is that like identical twins in humans, where one egg divides in two?

I will have to dig further into the published research to be able to answer.

And if there are 2 different blooms, is that like fraternal twins?

I would not think that was the usual case. More likely any differences in flower colour would require the seedlings to have different ploidies and different genetics from the same original mix. For example, the original might be tetraploid RRrr R for red and r for pink and one twin might get RR and be red-flowered but the other twin got rr and be pink-flowered and they would be diploids instead of tetraploids.

I'm glad you tucked it back in, too. I would love to see pics of it every three months or so, but wouldn't want you to pull it out of the dirt that often...

I wonder if the expectation is that each would eventually develop it's own rhizome and crown. Or if it's possible both plants can share a crown.

I have seen where two plants come out of a spot where I only put one seed, but I didn't pull it out to see if it looked like that. By the time I planted my seedlings, they were not connected. I didn't think enough of it to track them to see if both survived last summer. Now that I've seen your example, Celeste, I'm kicking myself for not studying it better when I had the chance.

I have had one, too, but like you, Tim, I didn't keep track of it!

If you find them and when you check they are connected, please keep track of them. Most of the time they will be simply exactly identical twins but once in a while one of the twins will have a different ploidy from that expected. They could be interesting or important. Imagine the possibility that a tetraploid seedling with wide picotee edges and large teeth had a twin that was diploid! Very rare, but not impossible.

Thanks for responding, Tim and Valerie. I think that it's very likely most people don't catch this 'twinning' event when it happens because it is fairly rare and one might assume that 2 seeds were put in one planting hole. I only noticed it because I yanked the seedling out of the pot to cull it. Talk about a lucky break for that freaky seedling! Now it's a celebrity in my seedling family and will be treated like one.

Maurice, I will be observing the little guy as it grows and hopefully can report back that it grew to adulthood.
I will share photos too, but of course in our zone 4 zones it may be a long wait!

Oh Celeste, it's worth the wait. It's exciting.