What is the advantage of pod parent over pollen parent in making your crosses...if any? If you are looking to enhance a certain trait....like teeth....in a cross, does it matter which parent that trait comes from? I am fairly new to this , have made some crosses for fun (over a hundred seeds...LOL) and have seedlings transplanted into little pots...yea.........now what???

Wish I knew... Plenty of experts on here that have way more knowledge.

It make no difference Imo.But I have heard it argued both ways.

Logically it shouldn't because the chromosomal pairs split in half and half go into the sex cells so it should be random.

It is different in mammals which are either female or male as the female X-chromosome is longer than the male y-chromosome so you can get sex-linked colours (like the red-tortoiseshell gene in cats) or genetic diseases carried on the x -chromosome.

There is also the question of 'polygenes'--(sort of mini-genes) and whether these can alter the appearance of the thing in question once they reach a certain level (called the 'Threshold Expression').

I'm nowhere near an expert on plants, though, so it could be completely different!

You may find this article from the AHS Daylily Journal on pod vs. pollen parent of interest:

http://c.ymcdn.com/sites/www.d...

There has been no objective reporting of any result that indicates any advantage for pod over pollen parent or vice versa for any characteristic in daylilies. It is assumed that if one is interested in green/white leaf variegation that the pod parent should show the variegation and that the pollen parent does not transmit the variegation. This is not necessarily the case but it is often the situation in other plant species.

There are always practical considerations that one should examine when deciding in which direction to make a cross. For example, is one of the parents pod-sterile or is one of the parents pollen-sterile. Does one of the parents produce many large seeds as a pod parent and the other produces fewer or smaller seeds as the pod parent.

Maurice, I love that we can always count on you to jump in on any genetics questions. I know I keep saying that, but it's a fine thing when you have someone as dependable and reliably helpful as you on a topic. Thank you.

You said:

admmad said:Does one of the parents produce many large seeds as a pod parent and the other produces fewer or smaller seeds as the pod parent.

This is actually party of an effort I hope to expand soon in my garden. I don't know what levels to which others go when it comes to recording pod-related information, but I endeavor to use my results at some point in the future to record average numbers of seeds produced by each cultivar, taking into account pollen parents (I have noticed that nearly all of my crosses with Lights of Detroit as pollen parent have significantly reduced seed counts than normal and a much higher propensity for squishy/rotten seeds).

I am interested to see how much bloom size of a plant (and, therefore, in theory....pod size) impacts the number of seeds produced...it seems to have a role, but not always**. That is, of course, also largely influenced by the size of the seeds it produces....(which is usually stable, but I think there have been some instances where the pollen parent had a slight impact on seed size... I'm not to that level of detail yet in my data collection, though.) And although diploid seeds tend to be noticeably smaller than tetraploid seeds, that isn't always the case. There is SO much variability in seed size (and shape) with dip seeds. ... And a bit in tets, too.

I'm hoping to compile all of my research over the last few years and over the next couple of years and see what sorts of things reveal themselves.

Genetics is such an interesting topic, but especially so when you're dealing with something as fun and beautiful as daylilies!

My hope/goal is that eventually we can have this information be part of the info grid for daylilies in the Garden.org database, but I wager I'll have to make a very compelling case for it, so I'm waiting to see if the data indicates reliable averages that warrant special info boxes. The extra boxes I am hoping to make a case for include: pod color (green, purple-top, or variable... This one is more for fun, but may also help confirm cultivar types if the plant ID is in question), pod shape (round/bulbous, elongated, pumpkin-shaped, other), average seed count (this one will be tricky, but I'm thinking ranges in 5-seed increments would be good here), and, if there is evidence to warrant it, a link to 2 lists: a list of pollen parents (or pod parents) that cultivar doesn't seem to do well with and a list of cultivars it seems to prefer. This might vary between gardens and prove too difficult, but then again, it might not. Last year I discovered that Crazy Miss Daisy (which may have triploid tendencies per the database) loved Absolute Ripper, but rejected almost all other pollen I put on it. There would seem to be something to that.

There is also the temperature argument...I try to keep a daily log with generic info on when I pollinated, the temperature (if I know it), and general weather conditions. I need to get a lot more accurate/specific in the future, but it's a start...

Okay, I clearly went off on a tangent, but if there are others of you that have excellent record keeping and are willing to embark on this journey with me... I would love to see what kind of data we come up with, even if it isn't done in perfectly controlled settings, I feel there would be a lot of useful data.

**(Yellow Hornet produced very large, elongated pods that probably could have held 20+ seeds, but most are only producing 5 or less, but they are sizeable seeds for a dip, atleast.)

... And Janet, to your point, I also hope to try and determine if there are any "pollen-linked" or "pod-linked" traits in future daylilies. I know last year I made a LOT of crosses where I did Cultivar Y x Cultivar Z and then also did Cultivar Z x Cultivar Y in order to try to control for the weather variable, in the hopes of comparing seedlings to see whether traits might be linked more to one parent or another. If I get any data along those lines, it will be years away, unfortunately. But know that you aren't the only person curious about this... Many have wondered this, some have theories, and hopefully some have data they will come forward with in the future. As for me, I'm slowly working on it and would encourage you to do so, also. If you do, remember to remain unbiased and ready for the outcome either way, even if it wasn't what you were hoping to prove. ;)

@DogsNDaylilies

When interested in whether traits might be linked more to one parent or another (A x B versus B x A) it is absolutely necessary to follow objective procedures. The most important are randomization and replication. However, the number of seeds planted and seedlings evaluated is also very important. Lets assume that one starts with a small number of seeds, say 50 of each cross. If we had more than 50 seeds of each cross then the 50 seeds that we were going to plant would have to be chosen at random from the entire set. We could not choose the largest seeds or the roundest or use any criteria. Then we would have to divide the seeds into sets (or replicates) say of 10 seeds each, again at random. Then with five sets of seeds for the cross A x B and five sets of seeds for the cross B x A we would have to pair one set from each cross to produce five replicates. We would need to choose five different locations in our garden or field and place the sets of seeds at random in those locations. The end result might be five locations with a row of one cross beside a row of the other cross in different sequences. For example, location 1 AB location 2 BA location 3 BA location 4 AB location 5 AB might be the sequence of rows. The orientations of the rows would be different in relation to North-South or East-West or other factors in our garden/field because they were chosen at random. Then as we grow the plants we would have to make certain that they were all treated in the same way. For example each row or each plant would get the same measured amount of fertilizer or water or both together, etc.

Potential problems: paths next to a row of test seeds may cause the plants in that row to grow differently. The neighbouring plants growing next to rows of test seeds are likely to be different and therefore affect the plants in the test rows differently. Those are just two of many possible factors that can cause differences in plants and reasons why we replicate (have repetitions of the rows) and do everything at random.

Lol, Maurice I know....there are hundreds of variables no matter what methods are used, even if they were to be grown indoors in a facility with minimal variables. You remind me of the variables every time I bring up genetics and trying to determine genetic traits, but I am not (and will not) claim that my research is particularly scientific or lacking in any confounding variables. The best I can do is record what happens in my garden, what variables I controlled for, and what variables I am aware of that I didn't. The more people that contribute, the more we can deduce from the results in the future, but no garden will ever be a perfectly-controlled environment; nature will make sure of that...as soon as you thing that you have controlled for everything, a bird will poop on your flower which will cause some sort of chemical change that will alter your results.

Our best defense against the randomness of nature is sheer quantity of best-effort results with as many details as possible. Eventually, patterns may (or may not) emerge.

This is really my first year in doing many crosses, but I did notice that my best looking seeds came from 'Gypsy Rose Lee', it set pods very easily and made lots of nice plump fat seeds. However, I am not sure nice plump fat seeds will actually produce any better plants than tiny swiveled up puny looking seeds...is there a correlation?

@DND I collect the kind of info you want but I have so little space to plant I'll never be able to contribute the kind of data you want.

Off the top of my head I think seed size for both dips & tets seemed to correlate with flower size and/or foliage size. Plants with 6+ inch flowers and big fans produce small numbers of large seeds. I've harvested really tiny seeds this year from crossing minis.

Weather (temps & humidity) didn't seem to matter this year. Some humid days almost all crosses took. Some perfect days (sunny, moderate temps & low humidity) nothing took. Almost all my crosses were done at the same time in the morning (around 8 am).

@DogsNDaylilies
You are absolutely correct in that we cannot control for everything; we may not even be able to control for factors that we expect to have effects - but that is why we randomize and why randomization is so important. Proper randomization means that those factors should not have a differential effect - they should not enter into the causes of differences between the seedlings from our reciprocal crosses. When we do not randomize we have no way of knowing what factors may have been present and acted differentially and we cannot know whether those same factors might act on the same observations in other gardens or years or ...? Our interpretations of our observations become confounded with unknown effects.

@Seedfork
In general seed size does have significant effects in other plant species. As far as I know, no one has objectively studied seed size effects in daylilies and reported their observations. Whether seed size differences have effects on specific characteristics in other species depends on the characteristics and the environmental factors under which the plants are grown.

I used to think that some cultivars consistently produce large sized seeds as pod parents, but not always as pollen parent. I still do, however this year All plants are producing large seeds due to the wonderful growing conditions we have experienced here this past year. The ones that normally produce large seeds (many Stamile cv.s---especially his pinks) are producing gigantic ones this year (bigger than frozen peas--by x2). However again, some of the ones that normally would produce average sized seeds are producing a few gigantic ones as well. So----I think WATER, at the right times is the largest factor.

Thank you all for such wonderful information.....and your time and effort in explaining this to us. Maurice, I just want to live in your brain for awhile.