Just wondering what the odds are of getting a daylily that is very different from a cultivar that is crossed with itself. My mom has a clump of South Seas and it is the only daylily she has. Living out in the country, I am assuming that the seeds I collected from South Seas last fall are almost all self-crossed. The seedlings are now growing in my yard and has me wondering if I am wasting my time.

It would depend on how many recessives South Seas has, although daylily genetics seems to be much more complex than Mendel's pea plants ever were. It is not easy to apply the terms dominant and recessive to daylilies. It lies in the realm of co-dominance and partial dominance

Thinking of daylily seedlings is a bit like looking through an old family album ... you might recognize some similarities between individuals, even though they each are unique depending on which genes they inherit from their diverse lineage. Most offspring might look like "mom and dad" ... but some might look more like gramps or auntie. South Seas has genes contributed from all of these cultivars, and more. So, I'd bet you'd see some variety in the offspring. (You can always see the range yourself by looking at the cultivar in the database and clicking on its pod and pollen parents, and so on back through the generations.)

Parents



Grandparents



Older Part of the Family Tree

Thanks. A visual display is worth much more than mere words.

How did Lullabye Baby get in that line. It's a diploid. South Seas is tetraploid isn't it??

It is actually Tetra Lullabye Baby, but I doubt that there is a picture of the conversion in the data base.

Let's assume that the colour of South Seas is based on the red that it inherited from 'Chicago Apache' and the cream or light yellow that it inherited from tet 'Lullaby Baby' producing an orangey colour in 'South Seas'.

Selfing 'South Seas' can then theoretically produce reddish, orangey and light yellowy/creamy flowered seedlings. The colours possible include all the in-between colours from reddish through orangey to light yellow/creamy in potentially a wide range of shades. Some might be eyed and some not obviously eyed.

On the other extreme, there is a genetic effect that can occur in certain plants, called 'fixed heterozygosity'. If a plant shows this effect when a red is crossed with a yellow and produces orange seedlings then when those seedlings are self-pollinated all the resulting plants will be orange more or less like their parent.

Genetically the red tetraploid parent could be R1/R1/R1/R1 where R1 means the gene produces red pigment. The light yellow or cream parent could be R2/R2/R2/R2 where R2 means the gene is not able to produce the red pigment. The plant from the cross (the equivalent of 'South Seas') would be R1/R1/R2/R2 and orangey. When that plant produces pollen (or ovules) the expectation is that it can produce R1R1, R1R2 and R2R2 pollen but when fixed heterozygosity is present it only produces R1/R2 pollen/ovules (or produces R1/R2 in far far greater abundance than it should). It is not known whether tetraploid daylilies suffer from fixed heterozygosity or whether some tetraploid cultivars do and others don't.

Secondly, tetraploid ratios, even when the plant obeys Mendel's laws perfectly for dominance and recessiveness are not as simple as diploid ratios.
In a diploid with perfect incomplete dominance (additivity) if one self-pollinates a plant from a cross of a pure-breeding red with a pure-breeding cream/yellow one expects 1/4 red, 1/2 orange and 1/4 yellow. Fully one half of the seedlings would be the extreme range of possibilities. However, in tetraploids only 1/36 would be red and 1/36 would be yellow; the other 34/36 would be intermediate type flower colours. Only 1/18 seedlings would be the extreme range of possibilities.

Those fractions are the theoretical expected fractions. To be certain that in any group of selfed seedlings being grown one actually found a red or yellow one would probably have to grow more than one hundred seedlings.

Oh my, not once did I think to look at pictures of its lineage. Thanks for the picture story, Tina!

Laura, you are right, daylily genetics does seem complicated

Maurice, thank you for that explanation (although I have to admit, I had to read through it twice!). I only have 23 seedlings from South Seas, so it will interesting to see what I get. If I could get something like Ming Porcelain, I would be very happy!

Vickie, please do let us know what colour flowers the 23 seedlings produce. I hope you are lucky and get at least one seedling similar to 'Ming Porcelain'.

Maurice, I sure will. The hard part is the waiting... it may be another 2 years!

Did not know they had a tet version of Lullabye Baby. Thanks for that info Laura.