I thought about that but there is no way that it could have because they were in separate beds with 3 or 4 beds in between them. I actually didn't hybridize with SARA GRIFFIN JACKSON last year and there were no pods set on it (even by a bee) so there is no way it is possible for that scenario. I know doubles can pop up anywhere but I don't hybridize doubles so no chance of any double pollen on any thing near VIVA PINATA.

Also, VIVA was actually divided into separate DFs last year and they were all washed (so soil wouldn't get in my dipping bucket) and then dipped in Banrot mixture to help ward off any possibility of rot on open wounds so I don't see how a seed could of stayed in there anyway.

Too cool @tink3472 ! I've always wondered whether daylilies might produce the very occasional "sport" ... From the SF Gate newspaper archive:

"Plants occasionally produce 'sports' or spontaneous genetic mutations that result in a single plant bearing flowers of more than one color, form or growth habit." That would match what you are seeing, if both stalks are attached to the same crown, and the definition of sports even appears in the AHS site's Daylily Terms Dictionary (http://www.daylilies.org/ahs_d...) so they must have decided it was important enough to include it in a reference body for daylilies.

I can't wait to find out if it turns out to be from the same crown ... and, if so, what sporty name it might be given!

Well, if you are correct Tina .... that would be a new one on me!!!! Very cool, Michele!

Sports are usually considered to be mutations.

Daylilies can visibly sport, but they seem to do so extremely rarely, especially when compared to other plants such as roses, carnations, petunias, etc.

Daylilies seem to produce white striped leaves more often than they produce flower sports.

I know of only one daylily flower 'sport' that was described in an older issue of the Daylily Journal.

Sports are much more likely to be visible in diploids rather than tetraploids and both 'Viva Pinata' and 'Sara Griffin Jackson, R. N.' are tetraploids.

Usually when a plant shows a visible sport only one characteristic is changed from the expected. For example, if the normal flower colour was near-white then a sport might be pink or red-flowered, but the size, shape and all other characteristics would remain the same.

Doubles in daylilies are a different matter. I have bought several daylilies that were described by their hybridizers as 99% doubles, meaning that their flowers were double 99% of the time in the hybridizer's growing conditions. In my growing conditions the cultivars double 5 to 10% of the time. Doubles in daylilies show what geneticists call incomplete penetrance and they also show variable expressivity.

Incomplete penetrance means that a daylily that is genetically a double and should have double flowers may never have any flowers double or it may show a low percentage of double flowers when they should (genetically) all be double. That means that there are daylily cultivars that are registered as singles that are genetically double and that can sometimes, in some years, in some gardens or under some growing conditions show some double flowers. But those are not sports from single to double flowers. Usually when a daylily cultivar registered as a single shows one or more double flowers it will be simply indicating that it has some of the genetics for double flowers and is showing incomplete penetrance.

Variable expressivity means that the appearance of actual double flowers of a double cultivar will not always be the same. For example, one flower might be a peony style double and later the same cultivar may have hose-in-hose style, etc.

In this case, if the unusual flower is a sport then I would expect that it would have only one characteristic that was different from 'Viva Pinata'. For example, it might be all yellow or it might be all maroon or all purple. It might be smaller or larger but have the same pattern and colours. If it was a double with the same pattern and colours then although theoretically it could be a sport it might be more simply showing incomplete penetrance.

A bit of history. Stout provided the first evidence that double flowers in daylilies were genetically complex. He made crosses with the double Kwanso daylily and none of a substantial number of offspring were doubles. He then back-crossed and did F2 crosses and only one of many seedlings was a double (when simple genetics predicted a substantial number of doubles). What likely happened over generations is that hybridizers selected for daylilies that showed some doubling and then that were more consistent in doubling. They selected for other genes that modified the double genes so that they were more consistent at producing the desired double flowers.

Double flowers in daylilies would be described as a threshold characteristic. We might imagine that genetically double daylily cultivars are balanced on a knife blade as each flower bud develops. If the environment pushes them in one direction then they have a single flower but if it pushes them in the other direction then they have a double flower. For some cultivars the environment is unable to push them into producing double flowers, for other cultivars the environment is easily able to push them into producing double flowers.

If I understand correctly, both double daylilies and sports are considered to be mutations, but that they are separate genetic events. In the case of doubles it has resulted in a gene that hybridizers worked to increase in frequency, so that with environmental assistance there would be more frequent cultivars with that naturally-found doubling trait. It's cool to know that doubles do not always perform the same depending upon temperature conditions, and I'd never heard that warm growing zones like I am used to are more likely to get and see such doubling. It also sounds like you may be saying that sport, in that aspect, are the same - the environment will possibly influence and shape the nature of its appearance.

I wonder if it is possible that a sport might show two aspects of genetic difference, like doubles that also have fringing (not genetic?), or to lose some characteristics (no complexity found in the eye) when others get expressed? Of course, with no previous wide-spread breeding for daylilies that would sport, or documentation to show that sports may be found at a higher rate than once in a hundred years ... it seems to remain a tantalizingly open question! Of course, I understand you may be describing what you find to be an impossibility, and I duly note the judicious use of the words "wonder, possibly, and may be"

Still, there it is in the AHS daylily definition of terms, and so it is fun to wait on its end-of-season dig-up to learn more.

chalyse said:If I understand correctly, both double daylilies and sports are considered to be mutations, but that they are separate genetic effects

Whether a double flower is a mutation or is not a mutation depends on something that we cannot know simply by looking at the plant or its flowers. A mutation requires a change in the DNA sequence of a gene.
If we have a daylily cultivar that produces only single flowers and we knew that it was 'normal' or 'wild-type' in all the genes that could affect doubling of flowers then if that cultivar produced a fan that had double flowers and if that fan had one of those genes changed from the normal then it would be a new mutation that caused the doubling. Presumably if we bred from that fan the seedlings would inherit the mutation and be genetically different from seedlings bred from the other fans that produced only single flowers. The double flowers were produced by a genetic effect and therefore were sports.

On the other hand if we had a daylily cultivar that produces only single flowers and one day it produced a double flower and we knew that none of the genes were different in sequence between the single flowers and the double flowers then the double flower was not produced by a new mutation. If we bred from the double flower the seedlings would not be genetically different from those that we produced from the single flowers. The double flower was not produced by a genetic effect but it was produced by a developmental effect. The double flower was not a sport.

chalyse said:In the case of doubles it has resulted in a gene that hybridizers worked to increase in frequency, so that with environmental assistance there would be more frequent cultivars with that naturally-found doubling trait.

Genes and their mutations never work entirely in isolation. Their effects depend on many other genes. What we could have in double daylilies is that there might be one gene that had an allele that produced double flowers. It might be dominant or it might be recessive but by itself it produced double flowers only rarely. By selecting for consistency and higher frequencies of doubling hybridizers will have changed the frequencies of alleles at other genes.

In a typical sexually reproducing non-clonal species every individual is genetically different. When geneticists want to study the effects of a new mutation they put the new mutation into an inbred line. They do this by back-crossing the mutation into the inbred line for many generations until the result is that they have individuals that are genetically identical without the new mutation or with the new mutation. They can then see what effects the new mutation has in that inbred line. That is described as seeing what effects the mutation has on that specific genetic background. They can repeat the back-crossing with a different inbred line and the same mutation and see what effects are different because of the different genetic background. When one does this for a number of different genetic backgrounds one finds that the effects of a mutation are different depending on the genetic background (the environment is kept the same). A new mutation that causes flower doubling 99% of the time in one genetic background might have no effect in some genetic backgrounds while in others doubling might occur only 50% of the time and so on (the environment kept the same). This is the case for most mutations but is especially so for the type of mutations that cause flower doubling. Daylily hybridizers will have selected for genetic backgrounds in which double flowers appear frequently. Some of them would also have selected for genetic backgrounds in which hose-in-hose type doubling occurs more frequently and others selected for other genetic backgrounds in which peony doubling occurs more frequently and so on.

chalyse said:It's cool to know that doubles do not always perform the same depending upon temperature conditions, and I'd never heard that warm growing zones like I am used to are more likely to get and see such doubling. It also sounds like you may be saying that sport, in that aspect, are the same - the environment will possibly influence and shape the nature of its appearance.

A basic foundation of genetics is that Phenotype = Genotype + Environment + Genotype X Environment Interaction.

Each specific phenotype or characteristic of a plant may depend more or less on each of these factors. Mutations (or alleles) with very large visible effects on characteristics may depend predominantly on genotype with minor influences from the environment, etc. Others may depend more on the environment and so on.

chalyse said:I wonder if it is possible that a sport might show two aspects of genetic difference, like doubles that also have fringing (not genetic?), or to lose some characteristics (no complexity found in the eye) when others get expressed?

Yes, that is called pleiotropy. A mutation can affect two or more different characteristics. Often the effects are obviously related. An example might be a mutation that changed the colour of flowers might also change the colour of roots or possibly of leaves, etc. Sometimes they are less obvious - a mutation that changed the colour of flowers might also change the plant's susceptibility to some disease. Typically with visibly obvious mutations there is one predominant effect (qualitative) with perhaps other minor effects that require measuring to identify (quantitative).

Awesome ... help me understand more of your descriptions? Would it be easy to tell the difference between spontaneously mutating sport doubling and environmentally induced (non-mutated) doubling by seeing where the scape originates? If from the same crown, it might be a sport, but if from a separate crown (like one that got mixed in with the clump by accident) might be environment?

Shoot, I have to pop offline for the day so often with our constantly changing schedule ... and with so many questions newly bubbled up. Lots of cool stuff to percolate for the day... thanks!

And, oh well - it will give everyone else the chance to ask their questions, and discuss their understanding of it, too! Awesome!

chalyse said:. It's cool to know that doubles do not always perform the same depending upon temperature conditions, and I'd never heard that warm growing zones like I am used to are more likely to get and see such doubling.

Every single daylily here is capable of producing doubles and usually do. Just like non-toothy daylilies will produce teeth at times. It is all a heat/humidity thing for us and not an unusual thing at all here. It is not a consistent thing and it may happen one year and not the next on each individual cultivar.

tink3472 said:

Every single daylily here is capable of producing doubles and usually do. Just like non-toothy daylilies will produce teeth at times. It is all a heat/humidity thing for us and not an unusual thing at all here. It is not a consistent thing and it may happen one year and not the next on each individual cultivar.

Thank you so much, I suspected that might be the case as someone told me that when they crossed doubles with singles the F1 was single and when they crossed the F1s together (or the equivalent crosses) they had approximately three singles to one double. That suggested that all the other genes that help the "doubling" gene to be consistent and visibly double were rampant throughout the daylily gene pool. In turn that would suggest that under the appropriate conditions most daylilies could double.

Of course, there is another interpretation - living organisms are complicated and they seldom simply obey the 'rules'. That is, all daylilies could be abnormal genetically and therefore developmentally. The end result could be that all daylilies might have developmental problems and produce double flowers under some conditions. Daylilies could be abnormal because they were produced by crossing different species, or perhaps tetraploids are abnormal simply because of their doubled chromosome sets.

Have you grown and flowered enough single flowered diploids to confirm (or not) whether they also are all able to occasionally produce double flowers?

I can tell you that Pastel Classic which is a single bloom has produced double blooming seedlings for me.

chalyse said:Would it be easy to tell the difference between spontaneously mutating sport doubling and environmentally induced (non-mutated) doubling by seeing where the scape originates? If from the same crown, it might be a sport, but if from a separate crown (like one that got mixed in with the clump by accident) might be environment?

I don't think it would be easy nor very reliable for doubling. If one had a great deal of experience with the flowering of a specific cultivar, having seen a very large number of flowers bloom under many different growing conditions over many years and in many different locations and it had never produced reliable and consistently double flowers (and therefore one was very certain that there were no circumstances where that would be possible without a mutation) then if a fan from the same crown, or one branch on a scape consistently produced double flowers then one might reasonably assume that the doubles were genetic (to be confirmed by breeding tests, of course).

The problem is that the difference between producing a double and a single flower is clearly very strongly dependent on environment. That makes it extremely difficult without appropriate breeding tests (or nowadays DNA sequencing) to be confident that the unexpected production of double flowers in a single-flowered cultivar is genetic. One's confidence would be stronger if the type of double was unlike any seen before in daylilies. One example of this would be a type of double where say the pistil is replaced with an entire set of flower parts (three sepals, three petals, six stamens and would-be pistil) and then that would-be pistil is in turn replaced with an entire set of flower parts and so on until the flower simply runs out of resources. Yes there are such mutations in other plant species and there is no reason to assume that they are not possible in daylilies.

admmad said:


Have you grown and flowered enough single flowered diploids to confirm (or not) whether they also are all able to occasionally produce double flowers?

My friend grows the dips and she has had plenty over the past few years. Not nearly as many tets as we have here between two growers/sellers but a good bit plus hundreds of seedlings and you know come to think of it I have never seen the dips produce the occasional double flower like the tets do.

tink3472 said:I have never seen the dips produce the occasional double flower like the tets do.

Thank you. That suggests that extra chromosome sets disturb normal development (reasonable) and that flower doubling is a sensitive measure of developmental problems. That also fits in with Stout's crosses using triploid doubles and finding that their diploid offspring rarely doubled even when they would have had two of the three possible genes from the triploid. The extra set of chromosomes presumably makes flower development more prone to problems. Thus tetraploids may also be more prone to flower developmental problems (e.g. occasional doubling) in certain growing conditions/locations.

Hemlady said:I can tell you that Pastel Classic which is a single bloom has produced double blooming seedlings for me.

Under simple ideas for the inheritance of doubling (for example one gene with a recessive allele for doubles) some single flowered cultivars would be able to produce double-flowered offspring in crosses with some other single flowered cultivars. Those would be single-flowered cultivars that were heterozygous for double flowering. Under more complex ideas for the inheritance of doubling (for example one gene with many modifying genes or more simply many genes involved) then single-flowered cultivars would be expected to sometimes produce double-flowered offspring when crossed with certain other single-flowered cultivars. The difference between the two scenarios would be that under simple ideas a specific proportion of the seedlings from such crosses would be double-flowered (one quarter) but under complex ideas there would be no way to guess what proportion of the seedlings from such crosses would be double-flowered.

In both cases there is no simple way to predict how many single x single crosses would be expected to produce any seedlings that flowered double. One could do so if one knew the frequency of the doubling alleles (commonly genes) in the entire daylily gene pool (diploids separate from tetraploids).

We may be able to get a better idea of the genetic possibilities from crosses by looking at the AHS registration database.

It may be interesting if we look at the parentage of Pastel Classic which is Mysterious Veil X Becky Lynn. Both are registered as singles. Mysterious Veil has nine diploids registered as its offspring and none are doubles. Becky Lynn has 121 diploids registered as its offspring and four are registered as doubles. Of those two have simple parentage involving Becky Lynn (only one generation) - Prairie Canary (Becky Lynn x Lacy Dawn) and Pretend My Love (Elijah x Becky Lynn). Both Lacy Dawn and Elijah are registered as singles. Neither produced any other double offspring. We could assume that Becky Lynn carries some of the genetics for doubling and that some of those were passed on to its offspring Pastel Classic.

We could then expect that if Pastel Classic was crossed with Lacy Dawn (single x single) some of the seedlings would be double-flowered. Or if it was crossed with Elijah (single x single) some of the seedlings would be double-flowered. We should also expect that if Pastel Classic was crossed with a registered double that a larger proportion of such seedlings should be double-flowered (than from its crosses with registered single-flowered cultivars). We should expect that in crosses of Pastel Classic with some single-flowered daylilies some of the offspring would be double-flowered and in crosses with other single-flowered daylilies none of the offspring would be double-flowered.

I think I crossed some of it with Fluttering Beauty last summer so maybe I will try and sprout some of those seeds.

Thanks for the info on Pastel Classic.

RE: Tink's SARA GRIFFIN JACKSON growing out of the VIVA PINATA clump. There can be a simple explanation. From my experience in the last two days of separating seedlings which I had left together too long before separating. I found some of them had seemingly fused at the side of the crowns or where so tightly intermeshed they couldn't be separated without damage.

Glen, your seedling experience is worthy of its own "Unidentified Flowering Oddities" entry, whether or not Michele's seedlings match your own in any way, planted like your's close enough together to fuse or not.

Pictures? Even pictures of discarded, damaged fans that show the effects of crown fusion or spaced-but-intertwining would be amazing! Your pictures are always very informative ...

Oh Tina, I should have thought of photos but I was rushing to have them planted before the rain and night.

Ah, okay. I'll insert my pics of owl ears and angel wings here for posterity, since I can't find any mention of them in the AHS list of terms. I'll assume that means they are still considered odd, though not unusual. And, I just double-checked because I thought Michele had once done a pictorial of how she raises seeds to seedlings to mature fans. I don't know how close together yours were, Glen, but fusing may not have been likely in the way she organizes her work (http://garden.org/thread/view_...)

Owl's Ears and Angel Wings

chalyse said: And, I just double-checked because I thought Michele had once done a pictorial of how she raises seeds to seedlings to mature fans. I don't know how close together yours were, Glen, but fusing may not have been likely in the way she organizes her work (http://garden.org/thread/view_...)

I plant my seeds in 72 hole seed trays and each hole gets one seed. However, since my plant is not a seedling and these plants were no where near each other for one to grow into the other fusing would not be the case. (my doubles were planted 4 beds over from the bed VP was in).