And some more wisdom she imparted at the dinner "after party"...
We were talking about styles and pollenation with incompatible pollen. For instance, L. concolor styles are very short, so its pollen would only need to grow a short tube down the style to do its job. And therefore, I reasoned, the pollen likely doesn't have the propensity to grow long pollen tubes because it would never need it. I thought this was why some hybridizers cut the receptor styles short, so the male gamete from a naturally short style species could get to the egg with a short pollen tube, even though the pod parent naturally has long styles.

Not so!

My theory, that different species pollens have varying propensities to grow different length pollen tubes, is rubbish. (Judith didn't say it that way, of course.) The problem of pollen tube growth (if there is one), is again one of incompatibility, but between the pollen and the style itself. A pollen tube is not programmed genetically to need to only grow a certain length. Judith said that if the pollen and style are compatible, the tube will keep on growing and growing to its destination, whether or not the pollen parent species has a short or long style.

She has watched and studied pollen tube growth under different circumstances many times under the microscope. (Would we ever think differently of her?)

So, while the ultimate length of an incompatible pollen tube might vary depending on multiple factors, the "cut a style in half" practice is only guesstimated conjecture. If you really want the best chance of getting the job done, cut the style really short.

I also learned that my favorite color lilies, the pink ones, have the highest genetic markers for virus susceptibility.

Fascinating info! Thanks for sharing, Rick and Tracey.

Tracey, i have heard that a lot about pink OTs especially.

I know it's true because I've seen it first hand. However, my stubbornness for working on breeding what I love intensifies my need to introduce known solid genetics back into these types, while holding some of that color I adore in lilies.

Wonder what it is exactly that makes the color pink so prone to virus.

In associations like this, it is often found that the gene(s) responsible for one characteristic is physically close to the gene(s) responsible for the other characteristic within a DNA chain. So it is more difficult to tease them apart in the chromosome recombination process (hybridizing).

So in the past I have marked my pollinated lilies with a tag that included the important info. This is good because it provides a fail-safe option if I get my record keeping mixed up. But it is very time consuming.


Last year I started with this - using blue painter's tape and just my hybridizing code. The task went so much faster, and it was a test to make sure everything held up to the weather and stayed legible through the summer. It does fine.


But the big blue tape was really annoying, detracting from any aesthetics the garden had. In other words, it was ugly. So this year it all got miniaturized with only the most necessary info: the number designated to that cross for this year. Actually, I could use the green frog tape to hide it even more, but I'm afraid I might lose track of pods that never develop. I think this is a good compromise. An added benefit is the ease at which I can photograph pods without having to separately record their identity. These pics take Aug 31.

TxO-5 x 1454-5


(15-157 Blue Flash x Purple Heart) x 1454-5


Anastasia x Sarabande


AxST-4 x Pink Attraction


I thought this one was going to shrivel, as sometimes pods first seem to take but then go downhill. But it has since plumped up.
Emily x 65-254


Time to harvest these:
Lilium dauricum (from seed from Sakhalin Island) x L. dauricum (from seed from Kingham Mtns)


Lilium martagon var. albiflorum x albiflorum pollen from Jim McKenney


Lilium tsingtauense OP


Various 1454 crosses


Lilium formosanum var. pricei


(Lilium longiflorum x L.henryi) x RR133-1


I have a trumpet like lily that I bred of questionable parentage. IF my records are right, it has the possibility of getting genes from L. davidii, L.majoense and an aurelian.
This left pod is crossed with my asiatic hybrid 1460-9, and the second pod with Straciatella Event. It's unlikely anything will come of them, but interesting that pods are even produced.


Also from this questionably mixed parent is a pod pollinated with pollen form another of my hybrids: an old yellow asiatic hybrid crossed with a mix of Winnipeggy and L. majoense pollen. Again, progeny unlikely.


And what about this one: with that same questionable parent lily, both pods crossed with Caravan (an OT).

I have tried that method but I have yet to find an ink that will last our long intense summers. So I am stuck with graphite pencil or china marker both which are awkward on a piece of tape. The china marker works especially well on venetian blind labels for the plants themselves though.

Nice! Good luck.
I made few crosses this year and I don't label them. I know which one is which. But if you do a lot of crosses, and especially crosses x crosses, label is a must.

I just used a plain old Sharpie this time. Figured since it only needed to last 3-4 months, I'd be safe. I try to mark both sides, too, and since the tape is so porous and the ink actually absorbs in, it's not a problem for me.

Otherwise, I stick to pencils, too.

Luka, when I first started hybridizing, I used the twist tie wires from bread bags. Thought the different colors would make it easy. But the sun washed out all the colors and they all turned beige!

My attempts this year:
'Golden Splendor' x leucanthum Black Dragon strain

'African Queen' x leucanthum Black Dragon strain

'Pink Perfection' x regale and x leucanthum Black Dragon strain

'Lady Alice' x regale

Lilium henryi x Lilium speciosum var. speciosum 'Uchida'

This is the only henryi on which pods have managed to form. Other 2 failed (same cross with 'Uchida'). Maybe this one will also be full of nothingness but at least they look nice (for now).

Good advice, Rick, on your labeling scheme, and it's nice to see Luka's crosses too. I started using bread bag clips this year and it seems to work ok. They are very inexpensive to buy online.
Fortunately one side of the clip has a matt finish and pencil works fine on this; less so on the shinier side. As usual I have more crosses than I can practically handle once the seeds are ripe. Among the crosses I have made, the first picture is of a henryi hybrid x henryi var. citrinum cross, which has produced some of the largest pods I have seen. They are weighing down the plant they are so heavy. I have also crossed L. leucanthum var. centifolium and also sargentiae onto both the henryi hybrid and henryi var. citrinum. The lower picture shows the henryi crosses back onto sargentiae. These pods are maturing very slowly, and coupled with the late flowering it is debatable whether these will fully ripen on the plant before the autumn rains start. I am now more familiar with Darm Crook's "potato nursery" trick than I was last year, so hopefully I will be able to get these sargentiae crosses ripened indoors if needs be. (Last year they rotted.)
Wishing everyone success with their crosses this year!

Nice pods coming along, guys!
Oh yeah, I remember now someone mentioning those bread tags before, and I thought to myself: "what a good idea", and then proceeded to forget about it.

Luka, you remember the incredible odds of the parentage of Black Beauty, being speciosum x henryi. I assume the opposite cross was even more difficult. But it's always fun to try and see for yourself what happens. You never know, and your different climate may factor in. Even if you do get some good looking embryos, the bigger hurdle is if the endosperm is compatible. Be sure to keep us posted, even if it is all chaff.

One always hears that you should not be allowing too many seed pods to mature on the same stem, because there isn't enough energy in the plant to go around. Many say only one pod to a stem. I think it really depends on the vigor and type of the individual lily plant. Actually, I do way more crosses than I plan to keep to the end. Mostly, it will be goofy crosses that no one would ever expect to take, along with competent cross(es) on the same stem. For instance, the Anastasia x Sarabande pod I showed above was one of four pollinations I did on that same stem. The other three were Anastasia x Yin (which did not take, not even a tiny bit).

For me, this year in particular has been hard on the lilies, being a dry and very hot year in comparison to normal. (I'm certainly not putting myself in the same boat as you all out west, but you know what I mean.) I had planned on allowing two pods to develop on many (most) of my lilies that I pollinated. For some, it was pretty clear in the initial phase the letting two develop was a bad idea, so on these I selected one. Still, some I allowed two to continued, and as time went on, I surmised that their slow development was caused by the overtaxing of energy by the two pods. I cut one off on each, and the ensuing spurt of growth on the remaining pods was quite amazing.

And this year, for the stems that remain with two pods, I kinda wish I would have thinned, too. Pods are definitely smaller than I think they should be.

But, in good years with vigorous plants, multiple pods aren't a problem.

Yes Rick, that henryi 'Uchida' cross is mainly for fun. Btw I forgot to say that 'Black Beauty' pods were all full of chaff like you and other said it would be.

Thanks for the advice on the number of pods to let ripen on any one plant. As you can see from the photos I'm guilty of letting multiple pods mature. I will remove a few to see how this affects the ripening of the remainder...

What are people's views on pods that are "open pollenated" (OP), by which I mean pollenated by something not of the same exact species. I have, for example, good OP seeds from L. pardalinum this year, but my group of pardalinum are, to the best of my understanding, propagated clones and so should all be self-sterile. I had other Western American hybrids flowering roughly 40 feet away and I am assuming that it is pollen from these that made its way to the pardalinum. But I also had other species - e.g. davidii - flowering immediately next to them. The same is true for my "OP" henryii var. citrinum, though my other henryi hybrids were flowering maybe 20 feet away.

So my question is when you get good OP seed on a group that should be self-sterile is it more likely that the pollenator is a closely-related species even if some distance away, or the nearest neighbor even if it is genetically more distant? Are these OP seeds possibly attractive to germinate and grow on because of the possible unknown and odd parentage? I ask, as to go back to Rick's suggestion of culling pods, it is these OP pods that I might cull first rather than reducing the number of pods from protected crosses. But maybe this conundrum will make me keep all the existing pods and I'll endeavor to be more disciplined next year!

If all your L. pardalinum plants are the same clone, then yes, they would all be self sterile, even using each other's pollen. So the question is: do you know for sure? If you don't, then the only way to know is to try some protected pollinations next year. If, for instance, you bought 3 pardalinum bulbs from the same company, I'd say there is a good chance that they are all the same clone. But you can't know for sure unless you test for it (or if they can tell you). Sometimes with smaller companies, you can ask for different clones and they might be able to accommodate you. Myself, I have never asked with lilies, but I have for epimediums and iris.

Assuming you have just one clone of pardalinum, you can be 99.9% sure that a cross has been made with another western American species rather than any asiatic. Heck, even all asiatics can't cross with all asiatics, let alone a lily even more genetically distant. And 40 ft away isn't very far for a butterfly or hummingbird.

Same with henryi/trumpets and asiatics. You can be 99.9% sure.

So would the OP progeny be attractive to try? Only you can answer that, and you will need to weigh it against the other pods' parentage. But if you are hoping for the one odd and unusual davidii "mistake", I wouldn't bother. If you had manually pollinated with davidii pollen, or a mix of davidii and some other WNA, chances are still extremely remote, but fifty times better than it naturally happening.

Another factor I take into consideration when I choose which pods to cull, is how they are developing. If on the same stem, some pods are turned up and some more horizontal, the horizontal ones are likely to be all chaff. Sometimes some pods will grow larger on the same stem than others. (Be careful when you judge this, as it may just be that the small pod is younger.) But if, for instance, an older pod is smaller than a younger pod, that usually says that the larger pod contains seed formed from a more compatible cross. Progeny are more likely to be stronger and more vigorous. But the smaller pod, being a less compatible cross, might give you more interest seedlings. Almost always, I go for the larger pod. Hard to grow seedlings that might turn out to be interesting IF you can grow them to maturity - well - I already have enough of those stubborn things.

'Lady Alice' x L. regale. Is this viable seed?

Hard to tell, but you can only try.

It doesn't look like normal embryo. That's why I am asking. Majority of seeds inside the pod looks like this. Others are chaff.
Maybe it's abortion?