I am not too sure how many folks on this forum are interested in hybridizing lilies, but for those that are interested I think it would be valuable to share our hybridizing goals. I appreciate the insight of others, what they are working towards, and how they plan to get there.

Why have hybridizing goals?
Ok, I have to come clean – I am extremely biased on this topic. My personality and training in my profession compound to give me very strong opinions on this topic. For me the answer is crystal clear and I recognize there is more than one way to approach hybridizing. While you don’t have to have hybridizing goals, it does enable you to be more efficient with your resources.

I think of hybridizing like going on a trip. If I am planning to go on a trip it is important to know what the destination is. If I want to go visit my neighbors this doesn’t take much planning but if my destination is further away, then some planning will help to ensure I get there safely in the timeframe I intended for the cost I can afford. Not everyone wants to get to the same destination and some people just like the experience of traveling regardless of the destination. The same goes for hybridizing – there are different interest levels and objectives.

You may be interested in hybridizing because you are just curious about the process and don’t really have an end goal in mind and just want to see what happens when you cross one thing with another. You may be new to hybridizing and are just getting your feet wet or you just enjoy the process of growing, pollinating, harvesting seed, and growing new seedlings. You may be interested in hybridizing because you have a specific area of interest where you want to focus on a particular breeding group and at least in your mind have an idea of where you are interested in going. It may be working on certain flower color, or flower shape/pose, or a cross that has not been done before, or even trying to improve fertility to get more seedlings from a certain breeding group. You may want to try to recreate something you’ve seen or read about or try to come up with something new. Regardless of your interest you would likely benefit from taking a step back and thinking about your destination.

There is nothing wrong with wandering through the garden and just randomly grabbing pollen from one lily and placing it on another. I have done it – still expect I will do it some in the future. There is nothing wrong with letting nature do the pollination – I usually see this referred to as Open Pollination and abbreviated OP for seed in seed exchanges (HP means hand pollinated). There is certainly the possibility that something interesting will come from those seeds. I am not trying to discourage creative pollinating in the garden – just would like to point to some things that may help you be more effective.

Starting with the end in mind allows you to map out a path or strategy. Some questions that this will likely lead to are:
1) Has someone already hybridized a similar plant?
---a. There are many resources to investigate this
--i. Lilium registry has many cultivars listed with a detailed explanation
--ii. Lilium publication like those from NALS, RHS Lily Group, & others have many articles with information from professional to amateur hybridizers and their work
--iii. Catalogues – be cautious of what you read in catalogues as they are trying to sell you something, but there can also be some valuable information
--iv. Ask on the forum
---b. What type of plants did they use to achieve the plant you are interested in?
---c. Are you already growing the plants needed or do you need to find a source?
---d. Are the plants needed commercially available or do you need to raise them from seed?
---e. Does it matter which plant is the pollen parent or the pod parent?
--i. You can often find someone growing one of the plants you are interested in and could ask if they would be willing to send you some pollen.
2) If no one has made a similar plant – are there concepts that can be applied to help you succeed?
3) Do the plants you intend to cross have the same flowering time?
---a. Do you need to force a plant to bloom at a different time?
---b. Do you need to collect, dry, & store pollen?

Let me give you an example – say I wanted to make my own Oriental hybrid by crossing L. auratum & L. speciosum. Many of the hybrids available commercially are very refined but they were also bred for the cut flower industry and as such have blooms that face upward and I don’t care for this for growing in the garden. Early hybridizers learned that it is very difficult to pollinate L. speciosum with L. auratum as often L. speciosum will make apomictic seed and if you make seed, often chemical inhibitors will kill the embryo either before or shortly after germination. They also found that if you do the reverse cross by pollinating L. auratum with L. speciosum, it makes a fair amount of good seed that germinates more normally. The next challenge is that L. auratum generally blooms prior to L. speciosum and depending on the cultivars and your growing area there may be no overlap of bloom time. This means you need to save L. speciosum pollen to use the following year on L. auratum or try to figure out how to force L. speciosum to bloom earlier. These are both viable options but do require some planning.

All right – enough of my rant on the value of hybridizing goals. I will post some of my goals on this thread in a separate post.

Trying to figure out how to organize my goals in some logical way… I think I may post each one separately to allow explanation.

#1 Develop fertile broad genetic balanced wide cross strains – OT, LO, OA, LT, AT, etc.

So this goes back to some coaching I got from Bob Griesbach. I had the amazing opportunity to pick his brain and ask him all the questions I could think of. The question I want to focus on here is “based on your experience in breeding OT’s, what would you have done different or what would you do different today?” His answers to this were very helpful. The first recommendation he made was that for wide crosses – do this with plants that have a broader genetic make-up. For instance – ‘Black Beauty’ (BB) is a wide cross hybrid that has only genes from L. speciosum & L. henryi. His suggestion was to cross something with greater genetic diversity like and Oriental hybrid with an Aurelian hybrid as a starting point to get greater potential for genetic variation in future generations. Most of his OT’s were based on the cross of ‘Tetra Black Beauty’ (TBB) x ‘Tetra White Henryi’ (TWH) or the reciprocal cross. These hybrids have limited genetic variability – the got a double dose of L. henryi, and genes from L. speciosum & L. leucanthum. It has been amazing to see the diversity that came from just these 3 species, but his recommendation was to go broader to get more potential for variation in color, flower shape, & orientation. So one of the crosses I am going to try to make this summer is “Journey’s End’ (JE) x ‘White Henryi’ (WH) – the intent is to get some influence from L. auratum in the mix. I found a source selling JE and have them coming for spring delivery and hoping they are the real thing. I have ordered this several times in the past and have gotten the correct plant once and imposters a few times so hoping I get the correct on this time. I have other F1 OT crosses planned – this is just an example.

His next recommendation was not as intuitive to me initially. Bob recommended to try to keep the genetic content balanced. For instance, when working with OT’s, you want to keep the contribution of Oriental & Aurelian genes equal. BB is an F1 OT with equal input from Oriental (L. speciosum) & Aurelian (L. henryi). When he crossed this with WH he did not keep things balanced as WH is 100% Aurelian and the results were OTTT. He would instead would recommend crossing BB with another F1 OT like ‘Starburst Sensation’ (SS). To make this cross it would likely need to be done at the tetraploid level – BB is mostly sterile in the diploid form. SS though has been crossed with diploid Aurelian (to make Silk Road/Northern Carillon) and diploid Oriental (to make Anastasia) and these are triploids suggesting that SS may produce some unreduced gametes as a pod parent and could produce some seed when crossed with TBB. The reason for the recommendation to keep things “balanced” is to allow for normal chromosome pairing, potentially improved fertility, and better variation in successive generations. When the chromosomes from each wide cross group are not kept balanced, when the plant goes through meiosis, it is not able to find like chromosomes to pair with resulting in failure of meiosis and no fertile eggs or pollen. So what this looks like from a breeding strategy would be to make a number of F1 OT diploid seedlings from different broad genetic parent plants, convert them to tetraploid (or use unreduced gametes) and cross these F1 crosses to make F2 tetraploid balanced seedlings. These F2 seedlings would hopefully have some fertility to carryon and intercross with each other and from different lines. For instance – if I am able to achieve SS x BB, I would want to cross F2 siblings to create a line where I would look to breed F3, F4, & F5 and also with a completely different pair of similar make-up. A couple of other F1 OT’s that I will try to use are Smoky Mountain, Nymph, & Gluhwein – if I could get a similar F2 cross from Smoky Mountain x Gluhwein at the tetraploid level, then I would want to cross tetra (SS x BB) x tetra (Smoky Mountain x Gluhwein) and then these siblings would be intercrossed.

The whole point of this is to do something similar to what Bob did but with a broader genetic background to allow more variation and keeping things balanced with the intent to allow restored fertility. This same idea can be applied to other wide cross breeding groups. For instance, tetraploid AT’s would be a very logical step. There are a number of tetraploid Asiatic & Aurelian cultivars. Instead of starting at diploid, the wide crosses could be attempted with these tetraploid cultivars with the hope of having some fertility in the F1 generation.

This is a very different strategy that the Dutch breeders would suggest. They are breeding for triploids and generally are breeding back to one of the parents like an O x OT or an A x OA. In the end I don’t want to have to continue to use Embryo Rescue and Cut-Style pollination – this is just a stepping stone to get to generations of hopefully highly variable fertile seedlings. Triploids are not my goal as they are difficult to carry on in breeding – some can have fertility but recent papers suggest that most of the seedlings are aneuploids which can lead to more issues with fertility.

So the last piece of advice from Bob was to go deep. We already talked about starting wide (broad base of genetics) and then keeping things balanced to try to get fertility. Now we want to line breed to dig out the variations and recombinations in the genetics. That means going to F3, F4, and maybe F5 generation to see what you find. At any point of something unique appears, you would try to select a few similar seedlings and cross them to try to accentuate the unique trait. Bob did this for example with his "Lavender OT's" that came out of his TBB x TWH crosses. Once you have fertility - chase the trait of your liking or combination of traits...

More to come but probably all I have time for today.

Your first post here, Patrick: if it isn't a precursor to a NALS Quarterly article, it ought to be!

It's still developing as experience with liliums increases but it'll likely be very gaudy. I mean I like spotting, I like papillae, I like the idea of nepalense night fragrance combined with a differing day fragrance, I like the idea of candidum's winter foliage, I like bulbils, I like bright multi colour blooms, will require heat tolerance, more out facing than up/down, etc

So....basically traits from everywhere and likely a difficult fight to reach something even close to it (particularly given I'm not sure people in Australia are having much success with candidum...will figure it out eventually!)

Nice topic Patrick. While I am new to hybridizing, I have set some goals, once I get really set up.

Asiatics, I'd like to bring in contrasting colors. And a blue Asiatic. lol Just kidding.

Trumpets, I think the inside colors are maybe where there isn't much tochange. Unless I can get a red inside and reverse red. But the reverse colors I would try to play with, maybe some bigger blooms size. or some ruffling in the tepals.

orientals, I'm not sure how well I'll be able to keep them going or what there is to do with them, that hasn't been done. Other than wide crosses

Martagons, well I like, and appreciate them, not what I would choose to work with. Too impatient.

Aurelians, I'd like to add some new colors into them. Seems like they are all some form of yellow or red and some with whites.

Henryi/ Rosthornii, I'd like to see what I can cross with a trumpet of various colors to see what happens.

blackhearts redhearts, I want to add to them. Maybe in hopes of getting the blackheart onto asiatics and trumpets, and spread it out so that it is not just in the nectaries. Eventually with a defined line.

Obviously plans and projects change as the program goes forth. Something catches your eyes and think about trying to express that difference even more. And I do love the pappilae, if I could get the huge pappilae onto plants with a bigger flower, that would be great

Leftwood said:Your first post here, Patrick: if it isn't a precursor to a NALS Quarterly article, it ought to be!

Thanks Rick – it wasn’t my intent but could certainly could be adapted for an article I suppose.

Protoavis said:It's still developing as experience with liliums increases but it'll likely be very gaudy. I mean I like spotting, I like papillae, I like the idea of nepalense night fragrance combined with a differing day fragrance, I like the idea of candidum's winter foliage, I like bulbils, I like bright multi colour blooms, will require heat tolerance, more out facing than up/down, etc

So....basically traits from everywhere and likely a difficult fight to reach something even close to it (particularly given I'm not sure people in Australia are having much success with candidum...will figure it out eventually!)

Protoavis – you have your challenges cut out for you. You will likely need to refine your thoughts a bit more to develop a plan. I like your thoughts – just hard to understand how you might piece it together.

Nhra_20 said:Nicew topic Patrick. While I am new to hybridizing, I have set some goals, once I get really set up.

asiatics, I'd like to bring in contrasting colors. And a blue Asiatic. lol Just kidding.

trumpets, I think the inside colors are maybe are where there are, nothing reallt change. Unless I can get a red inside and reverse red. But the reverse colors I would try to play with, maybe some bigger blooms size. or somw ruffling in the tepals.

orientals, I'm not sure how well I'll be able to keep them going or what there is to do with them.

Martagons, well I like and appreciate them, not what I would choose to work with. Too impatient.

aurelians, I'd like to add some new colors into them seems like they are all some form of yellow or red and some with whites.

Henryi/ Rosthornii, I'd like to see what I can cross with a trumpet of various colors to see what happens.

blackhearts redhearts, I want to add to them. Maybe in hopes of getting the blackheart onto asiatics and trumpets, and spread it out so that it is not just in the nectaries. Eventually with a defined line.

Obviously plans and projects change as the program goes forth. Something catches your eyes and think about trying to express that difference even more. And I do love the pappilae, if I could get the huge pappilae onto plants with a bigger flower, yeah the\at would be great

David – thanks for sharing your thoughts. The fun part of about lilies is there is so much variety from the different divisions we can all find something to work on!

And depending on how that black charm looks, might try crossing it with a different variety that's "black" to see what happens. Also that one into Patricia pride. Hoping that gives it a strong highlighted white color, either on the mid rib or the tepal edge similar to eyeliner

Great topic, Patrick. I am also quite new to hybridising (having set my first pods this past season).

Nhra_20 said:Asiatics, I'd like to bring in contrasting colors. And a blue Asiatic. lol Just kidding.

I wouldn't rule that out completely. There is some potential for this, I suspect, from L. nanum: http://www.rareplants.co.uk/pr...

Of course, being in Australia there's no way I can get that particular cultivar, but perhaps if I get enough variety of seed someday...


I am only beginning to form my hybridisation plans and goals. Some crosses I have done and plan to do are just out of curiosity and/or to learn more about what is compatible with what, etc., as well as to get a feel for the expected seed yield and viability.

Some possibilities:

I. Asiatics -- would like to develop some high bud count outfacing Asiatics; most cut-flower hybrids aim for about half a dozen out- to up-facing blooms.
II. Martagons -- same goal as @vanozzi - try to develop Martagons that can actually do well in our Zone 10 climate!
III. Candidum -- these seem to be few and far between in Australia, so it would be interesting to see what I can get to grow here.
VI. Aurelians -- I'm not a huge fan of papillae, so I'd like to see if I can develop some papillae-less, scented, out- to down-facing recurved Aurelian hybrids in a range of colours. Meanwhile I'd also be working to improve the Aurelians I have.
VIII. Interdivisional -- one project I have is to map out what species can be crossed without the need for special techniques. I've already developed a list based on what I've been able to find about confirmed crosses, but there are others that aren't clear that would be interesting to test.

auratum said:
Protoavis – you have your challenges cut out for you. You will likely need to refine your thoughts a bit more to develop a plan. I like your thoughts – just hard to understand how you might piece it together.

Stacking the gene pool I'm working with the traits I want, culling heavily and a whole lot of line breeding.

My biggest hurdle so far is just getting the genes I want to work with on speciemans that grow here. After that it's just numbers, luck and time (and multiple smaller goals involving combining just a few of the traits into "strains" that consistently produce those combined traits...step by step).

Goals:
A nice pink trumpet with a lavender brushmark. Is it possible? I hope so. I will be working with tetra pink trumpets and some polyploid lavender OTs from the work of Bob Griesbach in hopes of reaching my goal.

Have also dabbled in conversion of orientals to polyploid genetics. It's a sad thing to fry them and kill them. The oriental lily funeral. Sensitive little souls they are. Diving into conversion, the reality sets in of what success means. It is not work for the impatient.

Would like to bring in some of the purple spotting from the oriental into the pink trumpet as well.Whether it is possible on a polyploid level, I don't know.

Thanks guys.

David - were you talking about 'Black Charm'? Not sure I know 'Black Magic'

Josh - thanks for jumping in. Your growing zone is a challenge for sure - especially with martagons. Getting the list of species that cross naturally is very helpful. In Ed McRae's book in the species description section he talks about what things have been crossed with. It is a bit dated but does a nice job of capturing the older work.

Protoavis - agreed, all these efforts are a time commitment and will take many seasons to make progress.

Tracey - some great ideas there! Thanks for sharing!

Correct Patrick. I meant 'Black Charm'. Phone hates me and autocorrects everything. Lol. Maybe it was naming a variety for me. Lol

So I am newer to hybridizing but in the last few years I have been happy with my progression as far as methods and organization.
I have a few goals that I'm interested in.
1. A flatter flowered green Aurelian with or without papillae and a black nectary. I would like the petals to be intermediate in size between Henryi and trumpet. I'm using my Henryi hybrid as the base for this program and getting whatever green I can get my hands on to work this up. I can work on the nectaries later.
2. A recurred pink or purple Aurelian closer to the Henryi side.
3. I'm a big fan of down/down and out facing flowers in general for the garden so I love Henryi of course but I really enjoy 1c hybrids with long pedicels. Trying to get some interesting down facing asiatics going.
4. Martrumpets!!! I'd love to somehow combine the bud count and small flowers of martagons with the bell shaped flowers of trumpets. I'm picturing a martagon type inflorescence with mini downfacing bells!
5. I love some of the wide species crosses although I'm not ready to try it mostly until I can start to learn embryo rescue and TC techniques. I think some of the more recent crosses (Fusion, Lankon, Kushi Maya) are proving that just about anything is possible and that if you make the right cross, you can take difficult to grow species and turn them into similar looking hybrids that are very easy to grow.

Overall other than my first two areas I'm kind of winging it and I'm sure my interest will change here and there because I will be inspired by new things that people are doing. Also interests change. When I first got interested in lilies, I enjoyed the upfacing large flowered asiatics a lot more than I do now. For now I will see what beauties can be had with my hybrids and work from there.

Cross-posting this in the species & hybrids thread as well (The thread "Lilies species & hybrids" in Lilies forum) just to make sure this can be found again...

Here is my list thus far of possible primary hybrids (plus a few extra ones) that should be possible without special techniques (i.e. embryo rescue): HTML PDF XLSX

Hopefully this will be useful to a few people. Compiling it has certainly given me a few ideas!

Protoavis said:... I like the idea of nepalense night fragrance combined with a differing day fragrance ...

Hi @Protoavis - I found a number of seeds in the previous NALS exchanges (see my above document) that involve crossing L. nepalense with Aurelians (the product of which appears to be fertile). This might be a good start for your plans. Perhaps start with that and then cross with some heat-tolerant, out-facing trumpets?

Also, for your L. candidum plans, Darm Crook has shown L. monadelphum can cross with both it and Asiatics derived from L. bulbiferum (which, incidentally, produces bulbils - another of your likes). You could try for some monadelphum-candidum hybrids and then cross those with bulbiferum.

Joebass said:1. A flatter flowered green Aurelian with or without papillae and a black nectary. I would like the petals to be intermediate in size between Henryi and trumpet. I'm using my Henryi hybrid as the base for this program and getting whatever green I can get my hands on to work this up. I can work on the nectaries later.

Hi @Joebass - is this the kind of green Aurelian you are looking for?

One of Paul's hybrids (my numbering: PR-T2C):


Unfortunately the pollen I collected from it this season grew mould (it was the only one that did it, too... and I had plans for this one). I do have a few seed pods on it - hopefully they will be viable. If you're interested, let me know and I can try to get you some pollen next season (or if I have excess viable seed, some of that).

About your Lily species hybrids list, Joshua, it is definitely a useful tool.
But I don't think the existence of a particular cross in the NALS Seed ex list proves the cross can be by natural means (without embryo rescue or other non-natural methods).

- Of course, just because a seed has an obvious embryo, doesn't mean it is naturally viable. So even though a seed lot that looks perfectly fine, that doesn't automatically mean the seed can develop into a plant. I would never discourage anyone from sending such "questionable" seed to the seed ex, or from buying them from the seed ex. You can never know for sure. Still, the presence of an embryo just isn't absolute confirmation of continued compatibility.

- In the case of the crosses involving Aurelian lilies and L. nepalense in the 2015 NALS Seed ex, one might think that since the pollen parent of many of the crosses is already a mature Aurelian x L. nepalense cross¹, that this is proof. But was that previous cross through a natural, ER or some other assisted means? The only way to know would be to talk to the seed donor, Paul Carter. I am not familiar with his name, so I have no basis to assume anything. (Maybe you know more about this and can enlighten?)

Since I donated L. papilliferum that year, I was among the first dibs to obtain a few of those crosses. They did have visible embryos, but with four lots, none produced even one sprout. (Hope it wasn't just me... )


¹Example: 85-144 Moonlight Belle x (yellow aur. x L. nepalense)

Nhra_20 said:Asiatics, I'd like to bring in contrasting colors. And a blue Asiatic. lol Just kidding.

Since there is no blue gene in lilies (to my knowledge), zeroing in on hybridizing with bluish lilies may or may not be the answer. The color is achieved by an orchestrated dance of other color combinations and maybe even other factors (refractive quality of tepal surfaces?). Successful blue hybridizing might be similar to the methods that produce brown trumpet lilies. I forget which, but it is done by crossing two disparate colored lilies. (Although, I am not sure what happens when two brown lilies are crossed.)

Leftwood said: They did have visible embryos, but with four lots, none produced even one sprout. (Hope it wasn't just me... )


¹Example: 85-144 Moonlight Belle x (yellow aur. x L. nepalense)

Just to add some information relative to Paul Carter seeds. The seed lots I got over the years, both before and after he retired from lilies, never did produce good germination. The most I ever got was 4 per lot. This was with some pretty straight forward DIV. VI crosses and non of the exotic stuff. I figured the seed must have been mishandled.

Leftwood said:

Since there is no blue gene in lilies (to my knowledge), zeroing in on hybridizing with bluish lilies may or may not be the answer. The color is achieved by an orchestrated dance of other color combinations and maybe even other factors (refractive quality of tepal surfaces?). Successful blue hybridizing might be similar to the methods that produce brown trumpet lilies. I forget which, but it is done by crossing two disparate colored lilies. (Although, I am not sure what happens when two brown lilies are crossed.)

I had a chance to talk with Judith Freeman on this last summer. She has been studying lily pigments for decades and confirmed there are no blue pigments in any of the lilium species. She is giving a talk at the NALS show this year on the topic of color pigments I think so anyone that can attend that will have a chance to ask an expert on the topic. As for the brown - I believe that is a blend of the pink/purple & orange pigments.

Australis said:
Hi @Protoavis - I found a number of seeds in the previous NALS exchanges (see my above document) that involve crossing L. nepalense with Aurelians (the product of which appears to be fertile). This might be a good start for your plans. Perhaps start with that and then cross with some heat-tolerant, out-facing trumpets?

I am growing a seedling from seed from Lane Spence where he had bred L. nepalense to Div VI. He has bred several generations from that but it is not clear if he crossed these back to more Div VI or did sibling crosses. He said there was no evidence of the purple from nepalense but there was some hints of the green color and the scent of nepalense was present. I sent me a packet of OP seed and I ended up with just one seedling that is growing (just started it this year).

Rick,

I was being sarcastic with the blue asiatic lily. Though Judith Freeman is doing a seminar on "something blue" at NALS. I know sometimes sarcasm doesn't translate into text sometimes