It looks like one asiatic and the rest trumpet/aurelian(!?)
Am I wrong again?

Roosterlorn said: ...and until it blooms it will hold me in the mystic of the unknown.

Like this one, pod parent Lilium davidii!


Lilium davidii

Rick, the seedlings in my picture are a Div. VI cross. No Asiatic in that garden nor nearby. I try to keep my Div. VI work gardens as clean and pure Trumpet/Aurelian as I can. Which by itself isn't easy. I have to be so careful about seed and pollen I get. Just because somebody calls it a Trumpet or Aurelian and the flower looks like one, it doesn't necessarily make it so. I've learned to assume nothing.

Now, with you picture of the single leaf ( n ) first season or even second season single leaf L. davidii. Keep in mind I work with Div. VI here. With Div. VI, the designs of the first leaves are not necessarily a good indicator of anything. Sometimes with a couple every now and then, it might give one a clue as to what the adult foliage and background might be, but rarely. I always wait until I have a stem like with most ( n + 1 ), then look at leaf placement and design. So, from my point of view, if the same principal applies to Asiatics, the single leaf in your photo may well have densely populated, scattered narrow foliage similar to L davidii when it matures and reveal a lot more..

Relative to Kathy Jan and Dots and Dashes. Which one of these was the 'odd ball'? Or was the pod split with a portion of each?

Your insights are always valuable, Lorn. Thanks.

Relative to Kathy Jan and Dots and Dashes. Which one of these was the 'odd ball'? Or was the pod split with a portion of each?
Sorry, couldn't really tell you. I remember Ruth saying that there were other yellow spotted type ones, though.

My insights are always based on my observations and experience---which doesn't always mean they're proven---but hopefully food for thought and background informational use. Tomorrow, I'll post a picture of a nice pot of single leafs ( n + 1 ) that if anyone were to look at, they'd swear it is a nice pot of good looking OT seedlings---but they're not

Rick, this is the pot of seedlings I thought looked like OTs, that are not. ( picture #1 ). But check the foliage on the single stem ( pictures #2 and 3). It looks like it's a nice clean cross. Within a couple weeks, this pot will be full of laddered stems with scattered narrow foliage even though the first leaf is broad with lines.. Another thing I'll be checking when I plant these out next Fall is the color of the bulb too.

I sometimes get mix-ups in my pots due to 'seed-drift'... all due to gusts of wind of course, nothing to do with being a little distracted.

Worst case example: Two (or three? ) winters ago I had two identical pots side by side and two different seed lots in hand. Both were from Sweet Surrender pods (after Rick convincingly argued for Sweet Surrender being a valuable garden plant I relented on the poor thing and made lots of crosses on it that summer instead of getting rid of it. :D ). Anyway, I duly planted one in one pot and the other in the other. Of course.

3-4 weeks later one pot is starting to hairpin... nothing in the other. Oh well, just slow. By two months one pot is thick with seedlings like the proverbial hairs on a cat's back and the other... has one. I'm thinking Wow, I'm glad one of these crosses was fertile! The other must have been dodgy even though it looked like good seed. At least one germinated!

As the seedlings grew I decided my 'just one' on its own had to be a drifted seed from the good batch. Finally this summer that lonesome seedling flowered (obviously true to label of cross)... as did the big batch of seedlings from the other pot. And half of those resembled the occupant of the Lone Seed Pot. Oops. How on earth did I obliviously plant both seed lots in the same pot? That lone seedling was indeed a seed-drift baby, but I must have happily tipped her siblings in on top of her half siblings from the other cross!

And I had been so certain I had planted a single seed lot in each of two pots. Talk about false memories!

No original labels in the pots?

I am very glad that the birds that hop around in my pots are only interested in the granite grit for their digestion, and leave my labels alone.
My meticulous and very time consuming record keeping has saved me many times.

Oh, the pots were labelled alright - one label in each pot. It's just that I sowed one pot twice and the other not at all! And wasn't even conscious of having done that.

My hybrid seedlings (front pots) are doing great, one seedling (second photo black pot) has silver tinged leaves!

Looks great, Keith!

Not sure if this information is available anywhere on the forum at present (haven't found it yet), but came across this while researching lilium hybridisation. It's a table from a book that shows a number of possible species x species hybrids that don't require any special techniques (which I thought would be ideal for me and anyone else who wants to try hybridisation themselves):



Reference: van Tuyl, J.M., Arens, P., Ramanna, M.S., Shahin, A., Khan, N., Xie, S., Marasek-Ciolakowska, A., Lim, K., Barba-Gonzalez R., 2011. Lilium. In: C. Kole, ed., Wild Crop Relatives: Genomic and Breeding Resources, Plantation and Ornamental Crops, Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg. Chapter 9. pp.161-183. Available at <www.liliumbreeding.nl/La%2010565.pdf> [Accessed 15th May 2016].

Kind of like the crossing polygons of the genus lilium here:

http://www.liliumbreeding.nl/p...

Indeed, Connie. My understanding was that that crossing diagram also included crosses that they'd successfully created using various techniques, so wasn't exactly a guarantee that the home gardener would be able to replicate it.

Good information for the beginner. And for me! I had no idea that speciosum was reported to cross with nepalense with no special intervention needed!

Every now and then a seedling will appear that's very different from the rest in some way, shape or form. The seedlings in this 1 gallon pot are all the same cross and same age from seed planted in March of last year. All are very uniform in every way except this single exceptionally fast grower.

Could be a winner!

Roosterlorn said:Every now and then a seedling will appear that's very different from the rest in some way, shape or form. The seedlings in this 1 gallon pot are all the same cross and same age from seed planted in March of last year. All are very uniform in every way except this single exceptionally fast grower.

Wow it already is going to flower! That's got to be a keeper!

But it's certainly not what I intended, Keith. Either way, it'll be a fun surprise. I'll post pictures when the buds open.

Always good reading here!,, & loving it!.. My labeling consists of a" paint pen", with the labelling on the pot.. if its seedlings , usually a marked cut off venetian blind .. but ... accidents do happen!.. Lorn , good lookin stuff you have there!

Continued from The thread "2016" in Lilies forum as I thought this might be a more appropriate place...

Roosterlorn said:I often wonder how many people realize the number of seedlings one has to go through just to come up with one like that. Hopefully there are one or two more sisters in this batch that are also keepers. I hope it's as garden hardy as it is pretty. Now the fun part of yearly development and evaluation begins. Look forward to seeing pictures next Spring.

Australis said:Having no experience as yet, I assume it's only a handful out of, say, a hundred seedlings that are remarkable, let alone do well in the garden? What sort of percentages of seedlings do you find end up being both worth keeping (from an aesthetics perspective) as well as being hardy enough for the garden?

magnolialover said:There are some I am willing to toss after one growing season. I don't have endless room here. It seems you can get a pretty good idea of any cross potential in one batch. There is a lot of junk for sure. Almost to disappointment. But every once in awhile you see something that may be worthwhile and that is what keeps you going.

Roosterlorn said: I agree with Tracey's philosophy that you only need about 20 seedlings of a cross to find out if it's what you want. But I think if you asked this question to five hobby hybridizers it could or would likely lead to five lengthy and interesting discussions depending on what Division they're working with and what their goals are. To make a long story short: if I start out with 1000 seedlings of 40 crosses this year (2016), by the end of year 2020 I may have only 5 or 10 worth carrying---and maybe less. On the other hand, if I get lucky I could have a couple good crosses and have as many as 20 or 25 left. So, what happened to the other 980 or thereabouts seedlings along the way? Well, you lose quite a few along the way, especially the first year. They simply don't survive. It's Mother Nature's principle of survival of the fittest by defensively rejecting the weak to keep the species strong--it happens in nature and it happens with our crosses, too. Many of those remaining after blooming twice ((2019) are pulled for a whole variety of reasons. Of the 100 or so left at the end of 2020, more than likely another 75 or more would likely be pulled. Those would still make good garden lilies but not what I'm after and will likely be passed out to seniors at a senior meal location or the goodwill and so on. So, a stranger to hybridizing would probably look at the numbers and say that's an awful lot of work and a long time to put in for just a few good plants. But numbers don't apply to the enjoyment you get out of it, every day throughout the year. Keep in mind also that the hypothetical I just described is for 1 year only.There are 5 more years worth out there in the works which gives me a lot to enjoy.

@Roosterlorn and others who hybridise:

I have quite a few questions/thoughts running around my head now, such as:

- How many pods do you set on a plant (I have heard you shouldn't set more than three to reduce the strain on the bulb) and does this number vary with division?
- How often do you set seed on the same plant? Do they need a rest every other year?
- Do you do multiple crosses on the one plant, or only use one plant per cross?
- What sort of traits (apart from bloom and hardiness) do you look for in your hybrids?

Thanks in advance. I'm keen to learn more about hybridising and want to try it myself next summer.