Interestingly, my 'Anastasia' had wonderful pods - these are on the left - from open pollination, but the pods that have split seem to have only chaff. 'Scheherazade' did the same. I presume this makes the case for embryo rescue?

I hope those who have actually done ER will have more to say, but I don't think that is correct. You have to have a good embryo to rescue in the first place. From the beginning of fertilization, the embryo and endosperm develop independently. A ripe seed that needed ER to germinate should look very much the same as any viable seed. I supposed it could be void of endosperm (on a rare occurrence), but there still needs to be a viable embryo. It's only when the mature embryo tries to grow into a plant and accesses the incompatible endosperm for food that problems occur that are remedied by ER.

I seem to recall from back in the Pacific Northwest Lily Society days that pods that are suitable for ER look rather lumpy. I usually have a number of pods that look that way every year. They are usually OP pods but some are my experiments (just in case it works w/o ER). Never been interested in ER though, too much bother for me.

I think it is that the lumpy ones ones tend to not have very compatible genes. Therefore, they are more likely to need ER than well developed pods.

Thanks for the input, Rick, and for correcting my misconceptions. Biology was never my strong point in school, and anything that might have stuck has been long-forgotten, but this picture from the Encylopaedia Britannica (2012) I found to be useful in thinking about how the zygote and endosperm nucelli develop to produce a seed. It would appear that fertilization to create an endosperm nucleus may occur frequently - as in my large pods of 'Anastasia' - but that it is the failure to produce a zygote is what causes the seed to fail to be viable. I expect there are several mechanisms by which this could occur. No doubt there are multiple PhDs on this somewhere...

ER stuff will still usually have a viable looking embryo that you can see. But usually cum the seed earlier than letting it ripen naturally with the anticipation of it being a wide cross is something that's hard to get seed from generally speaking.

What you can see in the picture is a small part of my special sheltered location located at the entrance to the house facing west. It is 100 cm long and 42 cm wide. The depth is unlimited. For almost 30 years (which is older than me haha) lancifoliums have been growing in this place whose bulbs my father brought from somewhere. Today is a historic day because I "deported" those same lancifoliums (I don't know yet where I will move them and whether I will move them at all or give them away) and I cleaned the soil to a depth of 40 cm, ie I threw the soil where the lancifoliums grew and now I will put new healthy soil and humus. One sargentiae bulb and one sulphureum bulb should replace the lancifoliums next month.

It was good that you replace the soil there, not necessarily because the soil was depleted, but because there would be no other way to get all the L. lancifolium plants out. (Think about all those bulbils everywhere.) In fact, it is not only good, it is important because all the L. lancifolium plants would be carrying viruses. Now you will have to watch on the periphery to make sure there are no strays.

It will also be fun to have L. sargentiae and sulpureum side by side. So many people ask how to tell them apart that I wonder if it is because they look so similar, or just that people haven't actually seen them before. Or they could be like me - I used to grow two different unknown Chinese trumpet species. They both had bulbils, but characteristics didn't seem to follow the Lilium keys. One characteristic would point to sargentiae, while another would suggest sulphureum. I finally "decided" they must both be different forms of sargentiae, since sulphureum should never be cold hardy here. This was about 15 years ago, when I was USDA zone 4a. I have since lost them both.

Some scanned film photos from 2007, before I had a digital camera.







The daylily is a night blooming Chinese species, Hemerocallis citrina. The flowers are delicious. In season, I am always nibbling on them. A large but very tidy plant.

@Leftwood I only had 2 lancifolium bulbs there. No bulbils because I always collect them before they fall off. The reason I changed the soil lies in the fact that there were too many roots that I could not pick up in any way. So it was wiser to throw everything along with the soil than to risk infection.

The lily in your photo is 100% lilium sargentiae. There is one invariable fact of how to distinguish sargentiae from sulphureum, and that is color of bulbils. Green = sargentiae, brown = sulphureum. If I see correctly the bulbils are green on your lily. Interestingly whenever I looked for pictures of sargentiae I would always get a lily with a purple bud color. As in this picture:

(sargentiae field somewhere in China)
There is also green form of sargentiae but it's rare. Purple form is common and normal. To be honest I never saw sargentiae like yours. It really looks more like sulphureum but green bulbils means sargentiae. I hope I'll get nice purple one.

(PS; I bought some hemerocalis citrina last week haha)

That was one of the weird characteristics. One form had green bulbils, one had brown, but both were identical in the other differentiation characteristics. At the time I was trying to sort this out, there wasn't a lot of info or reliable pics I could find. As I have said before, I really don't think color is such a reliable characteristic to differentiate species. There are green forms and brown forms of L. leucanthum, for instance. Why ccouldn't it be possible for there be green or brown bulbils in the same species?

And initially, I settled on a self-centric decision that the larger one must be sulphureum. At the time, I could find no reference for its cold hardiness.

I received the Hemerocallis as H. nana, which it is not. For a long time I was leaning toward H. altissima, but now I am quite certain it is citrina. While I had been researching this, I found there is a wide variation in the H. citrina species. Yours may not look exactly like mine.

Steve2020 said: 'White henryii' x 'Ice Follies' has only a few viable embryos, and these look quite poor. Interestingly, my 'Anastasia' had wonderful pods - these are on the left - from open pollination, but the pods that have split seem to have only chaff. 'Scheherazade' did the same. I presume this makes the case for embryo rescue? I have several Orienpets nearby that might have generated the initial pollination, but the size of the pods implies that, with the right pollen-parent, I should be able to achieve some successful crosses next year. I will sift through the chaff to see if anything seems viable.

I will add several comments.

1) White Henryi x Ice Follies is a diploid (2N) x tetraploid (4N) cross and while possible is very difficult and not surprising you didn't get much and the embryos look poor. If these grow it could produce triploids or tetraploids (only if White Henryi produced unreduced gametes) and be interesting as potentially strong growers if you get them to germinate. In general crossing diploids to diploids and tetraploids to tetraploids will produce more seed.

2) Anastasia and Scheherazade are difficult parents - both are triploid. Many have tried to produce seedlings from them. Scheherazade can make a few seeds with fertile tetraploid OT/Trumpet but the seeds have very poor germination. I have flowered one seedling from an embryo rescued Scheherazade embryo - it grew weakly and was not a great seedling. Others have produced seedlings as well from Scheherazade. Anastasia is another matter - it is much more difficult to get seed/embryos from. I know of only a few - one grown from seed by Joe and another I have growing in tissue culture. Anastasia is 2/3 oriental genes and likely needs tetraploid oriental pollen to increase probability of producing seed and as there are no tetraploid orientals around that I know of that would be difficult to prove. It is not unusual for lilies to produce OP pods and not unusual for OT's to produce large OP pods full of chaff. Best bet on these is to used known fertile mixed OT pollen and pollinating several consecutive days to increase chance of getting seed but I would recommend ER for any crosses on these lilies.

3) Embryo Rescue is as the name suggests - just collecting embryos from green seed pods. The embryos have to be there or there is nothing to rescue. If you look through chaff - you will find some that have dead embryos present - you can still see the embryo it is just shrunken and dead. These are the seeds with embryos that embryo rescue can be useful to save. When doing ER you find all different presentations of the embryos - most often there are none. Some pods have seeds that appear they would develop normally with endosperm and normal size embryos. Some are have no embryo but have partially or fully formed endosperm and others have no endosperm but a bare embryo inside the seed coat. Most often there is both - half formed endosperm that is hiding an embryo. The embryos can be normal to extremely tiny - like just a round dot the size of a period. To be honest the tiny ones are killer hard to find and to handle but you try your best. I use a very bright light from beneath the seed to try to look for embryos but often times the embryo is hiding in the partially formed endosperm and you need to carefully pull it apart looking for hidden embryos. The color and texture of the embryo is different from the endosperm which allows them to be found in the dissected seed.

When doing embryo rescue - you open the green pods 40 to 60 days after pollination. Pods have 6 sections/rows of seed/chaff. I cut the pod into 3 sections length wise where each section has the dividing membrane in the middle with a row of seeds on each side. As you look at the row of seeds it is like a roll or stack of coins and you are looking for the thick ones. Using the coin analogy, most would look like a dime - very thin and smaller diameter and the thicker ones would be more like a nickel - more than twice as thick and larger diameter. When on ovule has an embryo that forms, it releases growth regulators causing the seed to expand and develop like a normal seed and those that don't have an embryo grow but not the same and stay thin and are the chaff. There was a comment about lumpy pods - this is what happens when most of the pod is chaff but there are a few seeds trying to develop - imagine stretching film over a stack of coins of various sizes - this is what it is like inside the pod. The lumps sticking out are the highest likely area to find embryos.

Too bad this discussion is buried in an 8 yr old thread with thousands of responses instead of its own thread which would be easier to find in the future.

Thanks so much for the reply, Patrick. Your comments on my White Henryi x Ice Follies and Anastasia and Scheherazade were very helpful. You explain quite clearly what my problem was. I should add that sometimes I find it difficult to sort out the ploidity of the various bulbs that I have. I wasn't aware that Anastasia and Scheherazade were triploids, for example. I realize that I have much to learn! The discussion on ER makes sense too, but I think attempting this is beyond my capability at home at present. But a very useful discussion, as you say. So thanks again...

Patrick, there is a way for saving posts, just click on the little gray rectangle (supposed to look like a book with a bookmark, lower right corner of each post). Then go to your bookmarked posts in your profile and edit it in a way to show subject. Edited bookmarks appear in alphabetical order so I start my comment with the main subject, in this case "Lilies". It is a rather awkward tool but better than nothing.

Here is a screenshot of my lilium bookmarks:



Also, a moderator can split a thread to start a new thread but they can not pick out a post to start a new thread. That is why I think bookmarking is the better way and folks can choose what they personally want to bookmark.

Snakes are constantly interrupting my gardening work. I need to save them all the time.

Same here, snakes are the good guys. So cute

I can't think of any snake here I'd want to encounter in the garden!

Are your local snakes poisonous Joshua? All I ever get in my garden are garter snakes, pretty harmless. They stink though.

Yes, the snakes I am likely to encounter will send you to hospital. Not all are aggressive, but you don't want to mess with the eastern brown.

Not a fan of any them. They are creepy and scare me at every turn. They couldn't eat enough bugs (and clearly don"t around here) to make them worth my screaming when they sneakily slither by. At least they could announce themselves.

pardalinum said:Are your local snakes poisonous Joshua?

This sums everything.