I haven't been growing out seeds lately, but I have a couple nice bee pods on Catherine Elizabeth (a late) this year. Do you think they would produce late seedlings?

That's a very good question.
I've bloomed thousands of seedlings and I've seen it go both ways, mostly earlier
The latest opening daylily I have is Ruffled Strawberry Parfait, and it's so late that unless I get the tail end of something in bloom, I have to use frozen pollen.
All the kids so far have bloomed weeks earlier than RSP, but the pollen is also from earlier openers.
I would like to hear from others on this
Ed Burton

Well a bee pod would be produced from two that bloom at the same time. (Probably Frans Hals going by number of plants in my garden!) I think Jim Murphy has a lot of lates that were hybridized by the daylilies left to bloom after a flood wiped away a good part of the garden earlier in the year.

I think this is an interesting question. Hopefully other hybridizers will give their input. I only have two or three late bloomers; one that I exceptionally like. I had save pollen from an early bloomer and made the cross. I ended up with two seedlings. One is a late bloomer, and the other, I'd say mid-season. The late bloomer was the pod parent. Just based on this *one* for instance, my guess would be you would probably end up with late blooming plants.

I would like to get more late daylilies so this year I let some of my bee pollinated late daylilies go to seed. Not sure exactly what I'm doing, but I am going to give it a try.

I would guess that it all depends on genetics. I agree that they could go either way.

When messing with two daylilies your working with ten generation's, so its crap shoot, the seedlings could bloom at any time.

I have a seedling from 2 EM's (Pumpkin Flame X Dance Bojangles Dance) that have produced a muddy pink with gold - but VL seedling. This is a poor photo- the midribs are yellow and there is also a yellow edge. In fact, I noticed it opened another bloom today. This is not a rebloom, these are the first blooms from this 2 year old seedling.



I think genetics has more influence than when the pod was formed ~Jan

Genetics, right. But the Lates and VL have the genetics for being late, right? I could look up the parents of all the lates I have available in my garden.

I am checking into genealogy at Tinkers. All 3 of my Elizabeth sisters (Carmine, Catherine, and Scarlet) have Sandra Elizabeth X SE as parents. Sandra Elizabeth has no parents listed. On to children of Sandra Elizabeth - 20. A lot of lates and very lates. Some not, but I am planning to check out the bloom season of the crosses. Not done researching yet, but one thing that jumps out at me are the Lates by Hibbard have Sandra Elizabeth in their history.

On average, if you cross two late-flowering daylilies and grow a number of their seedlings the average flowering time of the group will be earlier than their parents. If you cross two early-flowering daylilies and grow a number of their seedlings the average flowering time of the group will be later than their parents. Early for this is defined as flowering before the average date and late means flowering after the average date of the population of all daylilies.

Geneticists call it "regression toward the mean".



The figure above represents an imaginary example of the flowering time (day of the year, January 1 = 1 to December 31 = 365) of the population of all daylilies. The population has an average. We select two cultivars with late flowering (their first day of flowering is greater than the average).



In the figure above we have chosen two parents which both first bloom on day 270 of the year. We cross them with each other and grow a number of their seedlings. In a world where the day of first flowering was 100% genetic we would find that the seedlings would first flower on day 270. But nearly all characteristics in the real world are determined by both genes and the environment and interactions between them. So the parents do not have perfect genes for flowering on day 270 and so their seedlings will not all flower on day 270. In fact some will flower before day 270 and some will flower after day 270.



In the last figure we can see that although we chose as parents daylilies that first flowered on day 270 their offspring on average flower before day 270. However the average day of first flowering of those seedlings is greater (later) than the average day of first flowering of the original population. And there will be a greater proportion or percentage of the seedlings that flower after day 270 than there was in the original population of daylilies.

By selecting the parents for later flowering we have changed the average date of flowering in the seedling population (the offspring) and made it later. We can continue selecting (by choosing later flower seedlings to use as parents) and we will continue to change the average date of first flowering. If we simply choose as parents seedlings that flower on day 270 then with each passing generation of selection our seedlings will come closer and closer to having an average first day of flowering of 270. But if with each passing generation we choose as parents seedlings with even later first days of flowering (first generation 270, next 275 then 280, etc) we will move the average date later and later.

If we continue selecting for enough generations we can produce daylilies that all flower later than those in the original population and if we graphed the first flowering dates of the original and selected populations there would be little or no overlap in first flower dates.

Ya. I need some Hibbards and other VL's. Need tets to cross with Elizabeth sisters. Forgot about that little detail! Jim Murphy and Margo Reed have a lot of lates but mostly dips.

Thank you Admmad for your detailed reply.

I also would like some of Hibbard's plants when and if they will be available in the future. Ruffled Strawberry Parfait is my latest blooming and sure would like some other lates to pollinate it with.

I went to Tinkers and made a list of all of her late and very late tets, because I may want to cross some of hers (if!) with the Elizabeth Sisters which are tets. I notice that some of her VLs are Sandra Elizabeth crosses.

Thanks for posting admmad

Guess the short answer to my question is that late x late is more likely to be late-ish?

caitlinsgarden said:Guess the short answer to my question is that late x late is more likely to be late-ish?

Yes, more or less.