Nightlily said:
I can tell you out of about 8 years working on this issue that this will not bring you beautiful modern late and very late seedlings within years - you would need to work for decades to catch up with the cutting edge midseason daylilies available now.

It works much better to freeze the best midseason pollen you can get and use it for crossing in August or September (my job in these days now - every morning I have to decide which pollen I have to bring to the seedlings garden, usually about 8-10 different ones). Usually at least one of the seedlings out of such crosses flowers late/very late and opens perfectly after cold nights - and if I'm lucky it's a beautiful one.



Pods are not the problem here - the latest cultivars I was able to buy start here end of August - if I use the first flowers I can easily cross whatever I like - the pods ripe untill it's getting frosty (in our region in November or December).

Late/very late flowering daylilies are usually not fast growing - their 'lazyness' in producing scapes and buds and finally flowering at the end of the season is often due to a slower metabolism and for me it makes no sense to speed them up with a chemical agent - I will loose the information if a seedling has inherited the desired flower time too.

Always very nice to learn a new strategy. That is a very interesting insight.

Edit....deleted

Post was on an unrelated topic so was intentionally removed by me to keep focus on GA and daylilies]

Edit...Deleted

With regards to how long I can extend observations I am unsure.
The point of speeding things up was to chuck the ones I do not want, to make room for others that I wish to grow.
While extending the observation might be a cool idea, my initial plan was to treat all seedlings with GA next year so I can see all their faces then pick winners from each cross as early as possible.
I realize that first year flowers may not be wholly representative. But, in crosses where you want a specific color e.g. Red x Yellow, and you only want red seedlings then I doubt a seedling will change color entirely in future years, so I would feel safe throwing away all the yellows in year1.
I will ponder what to do all winter and come to a decision in spring. I can definitely buy a few more planters, but not so many (I have seen more nice seeds online, and if my own crosses bear seeds will want to grow some of those, aswell). But for the experiment to continue I would need to keep all 5 planters going for fair comparisons. Right now those daylilies are taking up about 20 places that fresh seedlings can go into.

My "garden goal" has been to find the best all around garden plants, and have a garden full of them. I think most gardeners have that as a goal. So "if" that ever happens my next step was to fit in a few "special plants" grown for looks. So I could see...if I wanted a specific look in a daylily...the faster it blooms...the faster I know if I have what I am looking for.

If it shows promise, it is a keeper for now. But if the coloring or look is not even close to what I need at this time...I free up time and space. Compost or free giveaway.

So I see the reasoning behind "red x yellow" wanting only the "red" seedlings.

May this be a great week!

plasko20 said:
Always very nice to learn a new strategy. That is a very interesting insight.

You are welcome.
By the way: it's not my strategy - I leared it from people who do this on a professional base since many years. Since I use it, the progress is clearly visible.

To your speeding up issue: are we talking about winning months or years in context with selection?
Here nearly half of the seedlings bloom one year after planting the seeds - and they mostly flower in time (not earlier, not later) - this is due to the quite slow growth of late/very late cultivars. The rest flowers in the second year after planting - then I clean the bed and cull everything that has no potential for further use.
I doubt that it will be possible to speed up enough to save one year (without changes in flowering time) - what do you think about this?

I do not have experience to say one way or the other.
From what I have gathered on this website, I anticipate that seedlings do not flower normally anyways in their first few years until they settle down into a routine. But that is only from reading other people's comments. So, even 'naturally' flowering daylilies time of flowering is not to be trusted in the very early phase of growth. I could be 100% wrong, I am just going by what others have said about their own seedlings.
Given that your own breeding program is based on time-of-flowering, that is the most important component to you and I can totally see that it may be crazy to mess with that. Having said that, you do not know until you test it. Hypothesis is one thing, but hard data is always the goal to base things on. And without hard data, through testing and observing, we will never know the answer.
But I honestly doubt that the GA will have long-term effects. I expect that if it is used only in the first year to have a 'sneaky-peeky' at the flowers then the daylilies will settle into their normal flowering routine in the second year and beyond, just as they would have done without manipulation.
From what I have quickly just learned the GA works by releasing intracellular calcium to activate signaling pathways. It seems to be a very transient phenomenon. I would have been worried if the GA changed epigenetic factors permanently (e.g. re-writes DNA methylation), but it does not seem to. So the genetics of the plant remain the same as they have always been (and presumably the epigenetics also do). And as such natural future flowering should be driven by those same genetics that have not been altered in any way. I would have to read more to be sure, but the data probably already exists regarding crop biology (e.g. do they spray every year to keep getting more fruit, yearly, or do they only spray in year 1 and get more fruit forevermore). I would need to dig around, I think.
Edited to add: Actually, I just realized that even if you are correct and the GA changed flowering-time permanently this would be exactly what you want. Just spray any daylily you like at a late timepoint and it will fire out a very-late scape. If it keeps doing this yearly then your breeding program is all-set. All it took was a spray bottle, rather than complex hybridization crosses.

plasko20 said:From what I have gathered on this website, I anticipate that seedlings do not flower normally anyways in their first few years until they settle down into a routine. But that is only from reading other people's comments. So, even 'naturally' flowering daylilies time of flowering is not to be trusted in the very early phase of growth. I could be 100% wrong, I am just going by what others have said about their own seedlings.

When a daylily seedling first flowers will depend on several factors. One of those is when the seed is germinated. Seeds that are planted outside in the late autumn and that then germinate in the spring would be expected to flower at some time in the future at their "regular" time for that location and growing environment. If daylily seeds are started inside, at times that are not possible outside naturally, then when they first flower may have little or no relationship to their "regular" time outside.
Daylilies, like most perennials have a juvenile period when they do not flower (under natural conditions). The length of perennial juvenile periods is typically related to plant size. That is almost certainly the situation with daylilies. So how well a daylily seedling is grown will strongly affect when it will first flower. That is especially true when the seedling is grown inside under grow lights or in a greenhouse or both.

admmad said:
When a daylily seedling first flowers will depend on several factors. One of those is when the seed is germinated. Seeds that are planted outside in the late autumn and that then germinate in the spring would be expected to flower at some time in the future at their "regular" time for that location and growing environment.

The same works for me if I start seeds in February inside and plant them out in May - almost every seedling here flowers at its regular time. I take notes on flowering time for all interesting seedlings for 2-3 years at least before thinking about registering a plant - and the only thing I found out is that the flowering period is getting longer when plants get adult (more buds per scape). Some seedlings open every year at exact the same time (sometimes the same date!) the first flower.

admmad said:
Daylilies, like most perennials have a juvenile period when they do not flower (under natural conditions). The length of perennial juvenile periods is typically related to plant size. That is almost certainly the situation with daylilies. So how well a daylily seedling is grown will strongly affect when it will first flower. That is especially true when the seedling is grown inside under grow lights or in a greenhouse or both.

This I cannot confirm 100%.
If you grow late/very late flowering daylilies they won't flower 2 months earlier just because the the seedlings are perfectly grown, healthy and big.
Light exposure and temperatures trigger the emerging of scapes, but for sure genetics have a great influence on this - and maybe the length of the daylight period

plasko20 said:I do not have experience to say one way or the other.
From what I have gathered on this website, I anticipate that seedlings do not flower normally anyways in their first few years until they settle down into a routine. But that is only from reading other people's comments. So, even 'naturally' flowering daylilies time of flowering is not to be trusted in the very early phase of growth. I could be 100% wrong, I am just going by what others have said about their own seedlings.

Depends on when you start your seeds - if you force plants to grow earlier (inside, under lights) they will have to acclimatize to natural conditions. The same here if I get plants from Northern Germany or Italy. Takes them sometimes 2 years to flower in time.

plasko20 said:Given that your own breeding program is based on time-of-flowering, that is the most important component to you and I can totally see that it may be crazy to mess with that. Having said that, you do not know until you test it. Hypothesis is one thing, but hard data is always the goal to base things on. And without hard data, through testing and observing, we will never know the answer.

plasko20 said:Edited to add: Actually, I just realized that even if you are correct and the GA changed flowering-time permanently this would be exactly what you want. Just spray any daylily you like at a late timepoint and it will fire out a very-late scape. If it keeps doing this yearly then your breeding program is all-set. All it took was a spray bottle, rather than complex hybridization crosses.

I have no idea if a GA-treatment changes something in the plant that works 'forever'. But I tell you a story about tissue culture and daylilies. There are only a few commercial sources for daylilies within the EU and I know 2 of them that propagate their plants with tissue culture (usind a lot of plant hormons, special fertilizers, ...).
I have plants from both sources here in my garden - they did grow well at the producers place, were sold in small clumps (2-3 fans) and they flowered as they should here in my garden the first year.
These plants are now more than 5 seasons in my garden - only 1/2 of them performs normally (growth, bud count, ...); 1/4 flower but do not grow - still 2-3 fans and 1/4 do not flower every year and do not grow either.
One of the sources is a friend of mine - does the tissue-culture propagation on a small scale in his nursery. He told me, that he has to cull a certain amount of plants because they show flaws - and sells only the ones that look like they should. Invisible 'flaws' like weakness in growth are completely hidden by the artificial treatment - so I would assume that this could also happen if you dope your seedlings.

Nightlily said:
Depends on when you start your seeds - if you force plants to grow earlier (inside, under lights) they will have to acclimatize to natural conditions. The same here if I get plants from Northern Germany or Italy. Takes them sometimes 2 years to flower in time.






I have no idea if a GA-treatment changes something in the plant that works 'forever'. But I tell you a story about tissue culture and daylilies. There are only a few commercial sources for daylilies within the EU and I know 2 of them that propagate their plants with tissue culture (usind a lot of plant hormons, special fertilizers, ...).
I have plants from both sources here in my garden - they did grow well at the producers place, were sold in small clumps (2-3 fans) and they flowered as they should here in my garden the first year.
These plants are now more than 5 seasons in my garden - only 1/2 of them performs normally (growth, bud count, ...); 1/4 flower but do not grow - still 2-3 fans and 1/4 do not flower every year and do not grow either.
One of the sources is a friend of mine - does the tissue-culture propagation on a small scale in his nursery. He told me, that he has to cull a certain amount of plants because they show flaws - and sells only the ones that look like they should. Invisible 'flaws' like weakness in growth are completely hidden by the artificial treatment - so I would assume that this could also happen if you dope your seedlings.

I have read about the TC stuff from meristems (I think). I do think there that the epigenetics can indeed change leading to a permanent change in gene expression in some cloned plants (obviously the genetics are identical to the parent plant, unless it was a revertant back to diploid from tetraploid conversion). So, yes, colors can be off as well as all the other factors you describe. But the pollen should still be good-to-go as the original, for further crosses (as epigenetics are supposed to be reset in gametes). But the seedlings I describe are allowed to naturally establish prior to a transient treatment. Far less harsh.
I think the only way if you really wanted to know would be to take a small number of your "for-the-bin" daylily rejects and test those. Then you have nothing to lose (aside from the all-too-precious space, of-course), and everything to gain.
I am very impressed by the seedling flowering times you observe, and I am also well-impressed by your note-taking skills on this.

I suppose, personally, I do not see the GA treatment any different to people who add diluted peroxide to their seeds to help them germinate. A foreign chemical was added to speed up a natural process. Does that peroxide doping change the daylily that arises, forevermore? I doubt it.
But, we are still dancing around hypotheticals with neither of us having a shred of evidence one way or the other. This is why I cannot answer your questions fully, as the evidence just does not exist.....yet. It is all just pure conjecture at this very early point.

These are the TC papers for daylilies that interested me, but I could not lay my hands on them as they are too old:
Krikorian, A. D., and R. P. Kann. 1979a. Micropropagation of Daylilies Through Aseptic Culture Techniques: It's Basis, Status, Problems, and Prospects. Hem. J. 33(1):44-61.

Krikorian, A. D. And R. P. Kann. 1979b. Clonal Micropropagation of Daylilies. Pp. 835-836. In Plant Cell and Tissue Culture: Principles and Applications. Ed. By W. R. Sharp, P.O. Larsen, E.F. Paddock, and V. Raghaven. Columbus: Ohio State University Press.

Krikorian, A. D., and R. P. Kann. 1980. Mass Blooming of a Daylily Clone Reared from Cultured Tissues. Hem. J. 34:35-38.

Krikorian, A. D., S. A. Staicu, and R.P. Kann. 1981. Karyotype Analysis of a Daylily Clone Reared from Aseptically Cultured Tissues. Ann. Bot. 47:121-131.

plasko20 said:

These are the TC papers for daylilies that interested me, but I could not lay my hands on them as they are too old:

Krikorian, A. D., and R. P. Kann. 1979a. Micropropagation of Daylilies Through Aseptic Culture Techniques: It's Basis, Status, Problems, and Prospects. Hem. J. 33(1):44-61.

Krikorian, A. D., and R. P. Kann. 1980. Mass Blooming of a Daylily Clone Reared from Cultured Tissues. Hem. J. 34:35-38.

The above two are available free of charge to members of the American Hemerocallis Society, along with their other journals going back to the 1940s. So if you are a member you can access them via the members' Portal.

plasko20 said:

I have read about the TC stuff from meristems (I think). I do think there that the epigenetics can indeed change leading to a permanent change in gene expression in some cloned plants (obviously the genetics are identical to the parent plant, unless it was a revertant back to diploid from tetraploid conversion). So, yes, colors can be off as well as all the other factors you describe. But the pollen should still be good-to-go as the original, for further crosses (as epigenetics are supposed to be reset in gametes).

None of the seedlings out of crosses with the plants out of tissue culture did flower up to now - so I hope for the best. But most of them I did not buy for hybridizing - just a few are good enough to give them a try.

plasko20 said: But the seedlings I describe are allowed to naturally establish prior to a transient treatment. Far less harsh.
I think the only way if you really wanted to know would be to take a small number of your "for-the-bin" daylily rejects and test those. Then you have nothing to lose (aside from the all-too-precious space, of-course), and everything to gain.

Unfortunately I have neither space nor time for such testing - but I would be interested in results if anyone else wants to give this a try.

plasko20 said:I am very impressed by the seedling flowering times you observe, and I am also well-impressed by your note-taking skills on this.

At the moment it takes 4-6 hours a day to observe the seedlings, make pictures and take notes - but now it's the most interesting time of the season for my hybridizing goals.

plasko20 said:
I suppose, personally, I do not see the GA treatment any different to people who add diluted peroxide to their seeds to help them germinate. A foreign chemical was added to speed up a natural process. Does that peroxide doping change the daylily that arises, forevermore? I doubt it.

Up to now I didn't need any helping agent for seeds to germinate - so I'm unfortunately the wrong person to answer this questions.

sooby said:

The above two are available free of charge to members of the American Hemerocallis Society, along with their other journals going back to the 1940s. So if you are a member you can access them via the members' Portal.

Thanks for this information!

If you become a member at archive.org you can read many books online by "borrowing" them for one hour or sometimes 14 days.

This book, Plant Cell and Tissue Culture: Principles and Applications. Ed. By W. R. Sharp, P.O. Larsen, E.F. Paddock, and V. Raghaven. Columbus: Ohio State University Press. is available at archive.org for reading (and downloading to read on your home computer with restricted access).

I would direct you to this paper by Krikorian & Kann, but unfortunately only the abstract is available online - provided below,

ANCYMIDOL SUPPRESSES HEIGHT AND ENHANCES MULTIPLICATION IN VITRO OF DAYLILY (HEMEROCALLIS)
Propagation of Ornamental Plants 3(1): 11-19, 2003
Abraham Krikorian* and Robert Kann

Abstract
The anti-gibberellin ancymidol was tested on three daylily hybrid clones to evaluate its ability to foster internode shortening of in vitro cultured shoots. At concentrations as low as 0.04 µM shoot height was reduced to ~ 50% of controls after six weeks exposure. Leaves of 'dwarfed' shoots or plantlets were 2 to 10 times shorter than control leaves and were more typical of leaves produced by mature, rather than juvenile plants. "Ancymidol leaves" showed overlapping bases and the "keel" or central dorsal ridge on the abaxial side of the leaves became more prominent and assumed a fan-like appearance. Because the leaves were more concave on the adaxial surface, they presented a "cupped" or canaliculate, longitudinally grooved morphology. Roots produced by ancymidol-grown plants were thicker and more fibrous than control roots, again a feature of mature phenotype. Shoots grown for protracted periods (ca. 14 to 16 weeks) showed a substantial increase in shoot production. At concentrations below 0.39 µM there was no effect on multiplication but as the ancymidol concentration increased, multiplication increased. There were differences in responsiveness to ancymidol among the clones for bud multiplication. Effects of ancymidol on phenotype and multiplication were reversible.

The reason I would direct you to research on anti-gibberellins is because gibberellic acid affects many perennials in the opposite way you would like (i.e. it delays flowering). This paper (I think since I have not been able to obtain it) appears to provide some evidence that ancymidol may act against gibberellic acid in daylilies to shorten their juvenile period and produce earlier flowering (under appropriate circumstances).

Thanks.
That is truly a fascinating conundrum.
From what I read the gibberellins have species-specific effects. From the internet (so taken with a pinch of salt):
"Gibberellins (GAs) affect flowering in a species-dependent manner: in long-day and biennial plants they promote flowering, whereas in other plants, including fruit trees, they inhibit it."
However, this may also be interesting: "Gibberellic acid is a very potent hormone whose natural occurrence in plants controls their development. Since GA regulates growth, applications of very low concentrations can have a profound effect while too much will have the opposite effect."
Perhaps my dosage was high and I ended up having the same effect as the ancymidol might have done?
How exciting! Now I have to get my hands on some ancymidol for a comparison experiment.
However, remember we discussed the effects of light? (I saw more scapes in the darker planters than the sunnier planters) it may also play a role:
https://www.nature.com/article...
"A NUMBER of long-day responses are induced by the application of gibberellic acid to plants growing in short days. These include the promotion of stem elongation and flower induction in long-day plants1;"
I have no idea what a "long-day plant" is, or whether a daylily is in this group.

Source of above quotes:
https://www.google.com/search?...

If you grow late/very late flowering daylilies they won't flower 2 months earlier just because the the seedlings are perfectly grown, healthy and big.

If any daylily seedling is grown optimally then it will be able to flower at its genetically determined time in the best manner possible. However, if it is grown less than optimally then it will not flower at that time. The poorer the growing conditions the more likely that the plant will not flower at all. The timing of its flowering will always depend on its growth and development and those strongly depend on all aspects of its environment.

Research quite a few years ago by the Heins group at Michigan State University determined that daylily flowering is not regulated by photoperiod and that daylilies do not require winter cold to flower. I have since confirmed those findings over a number of years and cultivars.

I have no idea what a "long-day plant" is, or whether a daylily is in this group.

Daylilies are not long day plants in the manner meant. A long day plant will typically not initiate flowers until the nights are short even though the same amount of light is provided (the daily light integral - dli).

Daylilies initiate scapes cyclically with no regard to photoperiod (as long as the differences in dli are accounted for) and no requirement for a period of winter cold.

The statement "Gibberellins (GAs) affect flowering in a species-dependent manner: in long-day and biennial plants they promote flowering, whereas in other plants, including fruit trees, they inhibit it."
is a fair and reasonable summation of research results. Usually the other plants are defined as woody perennials or perennials.

This research paper "Induction of bolting by gibberellic acid in rosettes of diffuse (Centaurea diffusa) and
spotted (C. maculosa) knapweed" suggests that even in rosette species the plants have to be above a certain age or size (past their juvenile state) to respond to GA.

A summary from a published research review,
"In an interesting parallel, in many angiosperm perennial species GA acts as
an inhibitor of flowering (Pharis and King, 1985;Wilkie et al., 2008; Bangerth,
2009). GA is thought to negatively regulate seasonal flowering in Rose
through promoting expression of the TFL1 homologue RoKSN (Randoux
et al., 2012). In Citrus spp., where GA treatment also inhibits flowering,
it has been found that GA treatment leads to reduced FT expression in
leaves (Muñoz-Fambuena et al., 2012) and in apical buds (Goldberg-Moeller
et al., 2013) under otherwise flowering-inductive conditions, in an apparent
reversal of its effect in Arabidopsis. Treatment of Citrus trees with the
GA biosynthesis inhibitor paclobutrazol (PAC) (Rademacher, 2000) under
inductive conditions increases the conversion of apical meristems to flowers
(Delgado et al., 1986), an effect that is reversible by simultaneous GA
treatment (Martínez-Fuentes et al., 2013)."

This quote, "Prior to the start of the gibberellin treatment, the plants were allowed to reach an age at which they were fully capable of responding to thermo- or photoinduction." from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p... suggests that gibberellic acid does not affect the timing of the transition from the juvenile phase (unable to flower) to the mature/adult phase (capable of responding to the environmental triggers to flower) but affects the requirement for environmental triggers for flower initiation. That would not apply to daylilies as they do not have environmental thermoinduction or photoinduction requirements to initiate flowers.