Just thinking that with the back breeding of some OT's to oriental repeatedly, will there be a decrease in vigor or hardiness? Has anyone noticed this in a heavily oriental OT's?

The way I see it is that the oriental gives the OT it's stem strength, leaves, and flower beauty while the trumpet lends it hardiness, height, and also flower substance. If you have a plant that is lets say 75% oriental and 25% trumpet, are you decreasing the hardiness given from the trumpet in favor of beauty?

Looking at Anthony's 'Cam Alpha', (which is beautiful) it seems like it may be more Oriental than trumpet and with l. Auratam being a parent, possibly multiple times will there be some decreased vigor through this breeding. Just looking at Anthony's pics shows that the leaves and flowers are very oriental. Just a few thoughts........

Joebass said: If you have a plant that is lets say 75% oriental and 25% trumpet, are you decreasing the hardiness given from the trumpet in favor of beauty?

If you consider the total combinations of the 75%/25% progeny as a whole, logic would dictate your statement as accurate. I'm not sure if logic is the end all here, though. Many (most?) genetic traits carry dominant/recessive alleles, or gradients thereof, so it can be complicated. Still, there would certainly be empirical genetic combinations that would buck the trend.

The trend seems to be deeper and further into OT crossing, but Johan Mak is now crossing several back with L. henryi. I recently bought a couple.

I've seen a few of those on Bd lilies. Pretty pricey but really nice. Didn't know you were a high roller Lorn! Haha When you buy an expensive bulb like that do you scale to get your most value out of them? I haven't really got anything for more than $15 but I almost bought 'Tiramasu' last year from the lily garden and swore that if I did I would at least rip off a few scales!

I remove two or three good scales to make safety back ups only, just in case something happens to the original bulb. Plus, I have a whole garden full of colorful, old cultivar Trumpet and Aurelian crosses which is a breeders pollen heaven. I plan to cross pollenate in both directions using them and the Mak stock.

Ok, this is an old thread, I've just been reading through them and wanted to add to this one if anyone else comes across it some day.

The answer is yes, on average. Normally though we aren't dealing with average when human selective breeding is involved, as normally the exceptional is what is selected.

Diploid liliums have 24 chromosomes (12 from each parent) and each pair will have a large number of genes fight for dominance.

Say the majority of trumpet height gene/s is on chromosome 3 (simplifying, height is likely governed by multiple genes on multiple chromsomes, this is just a simple example for traits that are immediately obvious and being actively selected for) and it's dominant (or at least co-dominant given that it's expressed in the original O x T cross). You could theoretically breed it 5 generations (so 98.4375% oriential and 1.5625% trumpet) and still have that chromosome 3 (height) being from the trumpet (which realistically means even if only that 1 chromosome 3 from the trumpet 5 generations back is all that remains of the trumpet that's still 4.166667% trumpet rather than the 1.5625% that averages would suggest). Technically you could breed it infinitely if you're actively selecting for it and it's dominant. The 50/50 split, averaging, works in the wild or when considering each generation seperately, not so much when selectively breeding over generations since that selection actively skews results.

Sure each generation makes the desired combination of chromosomes passing on less common (to a point, going back to height dominant on chromsome 3, if that's all you're selecting for then at worst if you only breed it to orientals, on average you're going to be looking at 25% of selectable offspring each generation, if you're actively searching for dominant traits from 4 different chromsomes then it goes down to an average of 3.125% being selectable which isn't that bad but highlights you probably want to start breeding more within a slightly more related pool if those traits are important) but that comes down to human selection (and possibly repeated breedings until the dice roll the right way).

So on average yes, but human selection can dramatically skew it based on selection criteria (and possibly persistence and luck).