Sunny, you really need to introduce that seedling in your avatar! It is so, so pretty!

Thanks, Juli. Maybe that's a whole new topic. How and when does one get to the point of introducing a daylily. I know you have talked about it before. Did you ever? and how about some of the rest of you ? i know we have a few hybridizers out there who have introduced daylilies. How did you start ? and what were your thoughts about jumping into that new realm ?

That is a good topic, so I split this thread off on its own.

I know one person who started introducing recently. I probably would not have.

I think I am to much the perfectionist. If it does not have fabulous scapes, high bud count, etc... I don't think it is good enough. Yet, I do have a few seedlings that others are introducing plants out if, so I suppose I should at least register them.

Im not sure about introducing...taking it around to daylily clubs and 'selling' it or making your own website. I do know for sure, that if you love it, I would at least name it. Doesnt cost that much and its 'yours' forever. I would not hesitate naming that particular seedling, I would then put it on the LA and see what happens from there.

We started messing with dip daylilies in the early 90s and in 1998 we thought we finally had something worth registering. I am saying WE because back then Kathleen did most of the hybridizing because of my job. She most likely is responsible for all of our early dip registrations, but would not register them herself so my name is on all of them. She hasn't done anything daylily related in the past ten years except the financial end, she keeps me from breaking the bank.
Back to 1998- When we saw this huge, tall, yellow daylily we contacted Jack Temple who lived about 15 miles from us, he came over, looked at the whole plant and gave his blessing, Lillian Kathleen was born. I think it was three years before I registered another daylily.

All I can say about registering a plant is give it time. I must confess when I first got into hybridizing I was too quick to register a lot of my plants. There are some that I know now that I would never register today. Now I am much more critical of the plant and the plant must meet higher expectations from me.

I plan on registering one daylily sometime in the next couple of years. It is one of my first seedling blooms and it's FFO was on my sister's birthday last year - so I named it after her.

I doubt if I will ever actually introduce it. This is a pretty flower, and so far the plant habit seems good - but I am registering it pretty much for family.

I also have a tall bearded Iris I will register in the future, after my grandfather who hybridized this one in the 1950's. He was in to hybridizing daylilies and Iris in North Dakota, and apparently had a large greenhouse. Apparently the greenhouse caught fire (arson was suspected but never proved) and the one I plan on registering was the only one that survived. It has been growing at my parent's house - and now my sister's house for many years. I will name it after my grandfather. The only people that will care about the iris is my family.

I still play around with seeds - and if someday I get a spectacular one, perhaps I will introduce one. But for now, since registering is so easy and not very expensive - I can see me registering one or three a year on occasion. ~Jan

I could name a few, but I don't intend to sell so not sure if there is a point in naming them. However, since a friend is introducing from seed I gave them out of my seedling - maybe I should so I can get the credit instead of it being "seedling x Robert Johnson"

I have some year old babies out there, with my seedlings as parents on at least one side. Strange, I collect mostly tets, but almost all the seedlings are dips.

I have to admit to thinking at times I would like to introduce some daylilies. Hemlady makes a good point. I know I don't want to introduce anything until I am completely satisfied that it has something excellent to offer in plant habit and distinction. My other issue is I feel that if the seedling is a cross of one already known hybridizer's x another known hybridizer's, then that's not enough. I think it should at least have one seedling of my own as one of the parents. Maybe that thinking is too harsh, but....that's me. Juli, I think you should register your seedling that will be a part of another registered daylily. I would like to see you get the credit due you for your work.

The flowers themselves will tell me when to register.
Also looking for great plant habit and distinction, and
they have to do that over a period of a year or two to qualify.

Hope 2013 is the year for that.

I've been thinking about this topic off and on since it started. I would imagine there are as many answers as there are hybridizers. Dipping into the realm of introducing can be exciting and terrifying. Registering is fun! After all that work you get to pick the perfect name for your seedling... and hope no one else thought of it first. Registering is also responsibility, recording the needed info during the previous years bloom season or even better over a period of years. It is, in my mind, also the hybridizers resposibility to know how to measure size of bloom and scape and what the definitions and characteristics are for the 6 very different distinct Forms. Introducing, to me, is a personal thing. Just as the reasons for the two flowers you crossed to get your promising seedling, the choice you made to select and keep it, maybe even breed with it, all personal. With that said, anything I have introduced or intend to will be a plant I enjoy seeing come up in the spring and when that first bloom is due to open each year I look forward to seeing it all the way through to it's last for the season. Sure I have a list of must have this - must have that, but if I don't like it, then it will eventually hit the compost pile. This past summer I had a known local hybridizer visit during bloom. This person walked around pointing to sdlg after sdlg, why aren't you registering that? When are you registering this? After scrunching my nose for the zillenth time or answering not enough branching, not enough buds, mungy color... I just said I don't like it. So my advice would be to have your list of what that sdlg must have, but at the same time don't pass a sdlg by that you really like or is deserving just because it doesn't fit all the checkboxes on that list( a Form you don't normally work with, odd color, smaller bloom than you would like). And trust your gut, if you really don't like the sdlg, don't let anyone talk you into introducing it.
I did something new this year, one thing that bothers me are the increasing numbers of registered cv's with, sdlg or unk listed as parents. One keeper sdlg had all the characteristics I wanted except the color is not to my likeing, The sdlg has been used in many crosses over the past few years with a large percentage of keepers. Because I work primarily with my own sdlgs the parentage on some is getting a bit long. I decided to register this one keeper and never introduce it. It now has a name and it's parentage recorded so future generations from it will also have their parentage searchable and I don't have the problem of writing a long drawn out parentage in all it's kids or resorting to the dreaded X sdlg (sdlg x sdlg). I will have to see if I continue this with other important seedlings in my hybridizing program, but for now I'm happy.
Registration is to keep order in the plant world, introducing is announcing that a plant is available to others.

Char, kudos to you for registering a seedling that you won’t introduce, so that the parentage is available for its future progeny! This is such crucial information when trying to guess the potential vigor of the plant, its disease resistance or susceptibility, etc. There are a number of hybridizers that believe inbreeding is one of the key reasons that contemporary daylilies have fertility issues and other problems. I’ve frequently wondered whether an unknown seedling parent is the unregistered result of either a sib or back cross, which would be excellent information to have, in order to avoid choosing a daylily from another hybridizer with that same parentage.

Thanks again! - Elizabete

I certainly agree with the long drawn out parentage being important. I don't like to buy
the plants that are (sdlg x sdlg) although I have done so a few times. Personally, I wouldn't want to
register one like that.

I really never thought about registering one without introducing it Char. That is a great idea and it gives me something to ponder on because I have a couple of seedlings that I love using in hybridizing but have not registered them mainly because I really didn't want to introduce them. They are not cutting edge as far as the bloom is concerned but I love their foilage and fertility.

I agree with the seedling x seedling thing, do not understand why a person who is interested enough in hybridizing can't take the time to record the parents. I still have my seedling records back to before I registered my first daylily in 1998. There are very few occasions I did not know the the pollen parent, and always recorded the pod parent. I know from experience that tags or paper clips may not always stay on the plant, but that is rare, but first you have to hang it on the plant. To not record the parentage is just lazy.

We had a major hybridizer do a program for our Region 14 fall meeting and this person sad they did not have time to keep up with parentage will all the other garden related stuff they had to do. I have also been in a hybridizers garden with seed pods everywhere and not a tag or clip on one of them. This person said when the seedlings bloomed he would know the parents, he really expected me to believe that.

If you make seed please record the parentage if you intend to plant and register daylilies.

I have actually thrown out seeds or pods because I didn't know the parentage. I use the Dixie cups to go around and collect all the pods in (some days that's a whole lot of cups) and write the pod parent on the cup and put the pollen parent tag inside the cup. Of course I reuse the cups and I scratch through the names; sometimes I miss a few and then when I'm sorting through them the next day after writing the new name on the cup there will be 2 names on the cup And with sometimes 50-100 cups there is no way I'm going to remember which it is unless I know it was something I would never use together; these just get tossed out.

Fred I have heard that also, "I will know the parentage when it blooms"

I dropped one of my trays of seedlings when I was transplanting them (fell upside down) and tags and seedlings went everywhere. These were some really good crosses I hated to lose, but I tossed them out because I really had no way to tell what tag went where.

Not listing parentage at all seems to be an increasing trend.

Char, that is a thought about naming nd not introducing. In my case, I do not want to get into selling, shipping etc, so I won't be introducing. I had a sales garden for years, and know I am not able to do it anymore. I can think of 4-5 that I have that I would like to name.

Picking a name is another problem for me.

If someone registers a daylily with my seedling as a parent, then I name it, can the other persons seedling registration be changed to reflect me registering the parent?

From what I read revisions can be made to a registered cultivar, however, there is a $10 fee for the revision.

That would be worth it to me.

It took me awhile to figure out the registration - introduction thing and realize that when the other hybridizer was asking about registering those sdlgs we both were thinking registration introduction as one and the same when really they are two different things.Yes, you can go back and correct a registration. You need to submit a registration form with the cv info and correction, there also is a $10 fee. I was just looking this up as I checked and back in Oct. when I registered a new intro I did list sdlg 06157 X sdlg 0601 as the parents. Why? Not sure, that is the way I have them written in my notes for the parentage, it's shorter than writing it out every time ...I know who 06157 and 0601 are but no one else would, I don't have a good answer for why....but I can fix it, a correction will be placed in the mail tomorrow.

Can't answer for other hybridizers their reasons for listing sdlg or unk. There are times when things happen and a tag gets lost - I have one of those registered this year as well. A flock of crows decided to play games with my labels early in my begining years of crossing. I now map every single bed and plant in it twice a year. I've heard some say the same thing Fred said, that they would know who the parents were when they bloomed. That wouldn't work for me, I get some of the strangest things out of crosses there is no way to have predicted the parents would do that. And those good things( plant, form, color...), how do you know where they came from?

Knowing the parentage certainly helps when considering purchasing a plant to hybridize with. Linebreeding and inbreeding are not all bad, they allow you to concentrate genes for certain traits that you want to see. At the same time they also can show you faults of the plants being line or inbred on because those are concentrated as well. This is where knowing the plants ( cv's or sdlg's) used and their parentage is extremely helpful. Careful selection of seedlings is very important when inbreeding and/or linebreeding and the more information you have the better informed your decisions will be in the selection process.