It is interesting Becky. That is also why I like growing seeds, although, if I don't get rid of some undesirable ones this year, I won't have room to plant any more.

SIGH!!! ENVY!!!!! I just can't get up enough enthusiasm to roto-till the foot of snow that is still on our beds - only three months (hoping) until the first bloom.

Cindy - I hear you! I still have room for more seedlings in my yard. I am one of those home gardeners that want to eliminate the majority of my entire lawn. So I still have the front yard to expand to! (LOL!) But after that, then I am going to have to make some decisions if I still want to grow more new seedlings.

The other seedling from the LM x DD cross is taller and has narrow buds. (Not likely to produce double flowers.)

I also have another new seedling that sent up a bud scape. If I can verify my marker, the pod parent is "Through the Looking Glass" with the pollen parent unknown. That seed came from Sandy (seedsower). So the daylily seedlings are now starting to produce bud scapes! The fun is just beginning! Yeehaw!

Edited to add:

Guybo - I am sorry to hear that you still have 3 more months before your blooms start appearing. It is actually getting hot here in the 80's. It seems we are jumping right into summer and skipping any kind of spring temps. I don't roto-till anything in my garden once the bed is created. I just amended it each year with a little compost. I grow mostly in raised beds because of the sand here in Florida.

This is not a daylily, but .... My amaryllis are starting to bloom too. I have them in one of my daylily beds. Not sure which cultivar this is. (Walmart clearance rack purchases.)

They sure are a welcoming sight!

Hi Becky,

Actually, my roto-tilling is for two new raised beds (175' x 5') that we built last year to accommodate the new cultivars that we've ordered for this spring, and some seedlings that will hopefully germinate and grow. I have to do some major weeding and tilling to get the beds ready for the new plants that will be arriving in May/June. We are surrounded by fields and find that our beds seem to be a magnet for weed seeds.

Our bloom season here (SW Ontario) will start with a couple cultivars blooming in mid to late June, and will go until frost in November. Most will be early July to late August and that's it. I've started carefully tracking rebloom characteristics, and find that most registered rebloomers do not rebloom here (probably about 60% don't). Of those that do, most have scapes that are shorter, and are much lighter on bud count than the first scape.

In 2014, our best reblooming daylily was - believe it or not - Siloam Breathless! It is not registered as a rebloomer, but I actually cut down a number of blooming scapes in November.

This year, I've tried to get a few "instant" rebloomers to see how those fare here in the "Canadian Banana Belt".

Cheers

Guybo - Your growing season is not too far off from mine. This is the first year I've had a bloom as early as March. Most of mine bloom June - July. Though something tells me this year may be different because it is so warm already.

Two new beds .... How exciting! I love having a fresh new bed to plant in. It's exciting to me to be able to start with a fresh slate (so to speak). Oh the possibilities!!!

I was just curious to see how many registered doubles there are. I was very surprised to find so many!!! There was 3452 listed! WOW!

I know - it's crazy!! And to think that with having 30, I wonder if I have too many doubles!

If it is a characteristic you like .... you can never have too many!

Becky, I just came from a daylily club meeting and one of the videos that we watched was "Daylily World-Volunteer Gardener" with Mort Morss and David Kirchhoff. Toward the end at the 16:12 minute mark, David is showing the daylily "Mother Upduff", a bloom where the petals are standing up. I had not seen one like it before and just goes to show that no matter the form, someone will like it. So it's just possible that if your double seedling continues to have blooms like that, will be desired by someone. I actually like the form of your seedling better than Mother Upduff.

Here is the video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Thanks, Vickie! I like mine better, too.

What I did was skim through many of the doubles in the database here on ATP. I noticed most all of the second petals that were larger, had petals that flared outward, not curled inward. When I first saw my bloom this morning, I was actually quite impressed. In fact, I was taken aback and delighted. Then I looked at the other database doubles and saw where my bloom may not really be a desirable trait.

But you are right ... it's all in the eye of the beholder. I actually do like mine, I just think I would like it even more if those second petals opened outward to give it a layered look.

Interesting video, btw! Thanks for sharing it!

Becky, watch for rebloom. The first scape of a new plant may not be representative of what it eventually will become. It's fun to watch!

Arlene - I do realize that is often the case. And I was thinking that this first bloom might be a fluke. But looking at the other buds, they are fat and short, too. So that has me thinking that they may very well be doubles, too. I just am rather stumped as to where those double genes came from. If I could find even one double ancestor, then I could say ... that's where it came from!

Are doubles common even from non-doubling parents/grandparents? Is it a mutation that causes the doubling that might just show up in a non-doubling gene pool?

This is a photo taken later in the day of the above LM x DD cross first bloom. I like how the green throat turned more bright yellow!:



Interestingly, numerous ants were crawling around on the bloom! It must have had some nectar to entice them to come.

beckygardener said:I just am rather stumped as to where those double genes came from. If I could find even one double ancestor, then I could say ... that's where it came from!

Are doubles common even from non-doubling parents/grandparents? Is it a mutation that causes the doubling that might just show up in a non-doubling gene pool?

Becky, there is a catch-22 to doubles. A plant may have the necessary genetic make-up to show doubling but the amount of doubling can be variable. A cultivar might only have 95% of its flowers double. Then the hybridizer would probably register it as a double. Or a cultivar may only have 10% of its flowers double or it might have no flowers double most years and some flowers double every few years. The hybridizer would probably not register that plant as a double but might still register it if it had other characteristics considered to be of sufficient quality to be registered.

Your seedling is from 'Laura Mast' x 'Dragonfly Dawn'.

Some of the ancestry on the pod parent's side.

'Laura Mast' is from ((sdlg × 'Inquire Within') × 'Mysterious Eyes') × ('Cyber Zone' × 'Seeking Attention').

'Mysterious Eyes' is from ('Druid's Chant' × 'Magnificent Rainbow') × ('Wineberry Candy' × (Tet. 'Exotic Echo' × Tet. 'Priscilla's Rainbow')).

Now lets look at the ancestry on the pollen parent's side

'Dragonfly Dawn' is from 'Solar Blue Angel' × 'Jamaican Love'.

'Solar Blue Angel' is from 'Inky Fingers' × 'Celestial Eyes'.

'Celestial Eyes' is from 'Blue-eyed Guy' × (('Gerda Brooker' × 'Papilion') × (Tet. 'Exotic Echo' × sdlg)).

Notice that we have 'Exotic Echo' in the ancestry of both parents of your seedling. 'Exotic Echo' is not registered as a double. However, it often doubles on rebloom. If we look at its registered offspring there are a total of 86. Of those, 20 are registered as doubles.

We can probably attribute the doubling of your seedling to inheriting a doubling tendency from 'Exotic Echo'. If I wanted to be more certain I would trace back all the ancestors and check each one for the number of doubles in its registered offspring.

I would be very interested in knowing if the other buds on the scape also open to be double flowers and also very interested in knowing how many of the buds on its next scape are double and when that scape appears.

Maurice - I am so glad that you saw my questions and have added your theory/explanation on why my Laura Mast x Dragonfly Dawn hybrid produced a first flower that is a double. I did not realize that Exotic Echo was producing doubles. I neglected to look at "all" the photos of it in the database. If I had, I would have seen some of the double bloom photos. Since LM and DD both have this cultivar in their genes, then I have to agree with you that is likely the reason for my hybrid double bloom. I will certainly be posting additional photos of any more blooms from this hybrid. And if it reblooms, of those as well.

I also have another plant with the same cross. Looking at the buds, it doesn't look as though that will have first blooms that produce doubles. I will add more bloom photos of BOTH plant's blooms.

Does the tet conversion have any affect on the blooms?

Great deduction, Maurice. I think you have found the answer to Becky's question

beckygardener said:Does the tet conversion have any affect on the blooms?

We can investigate that question by looking at the information in the AHS registration database.

Let's look just at the information for 'Exotic Echo'.
As a diploid it has produced 46 single registrations and nine double registrations. As a tetraploid it has produced 19 single registrations and 12 double registrations.
That works out to be 9/55 or 16.4% of its registrations are doubles as a diploid and 12/31 or 38.7% of its registrations are doubles as a tetraploid.

Although there are more double registrations for the tetraploid conversion of 'Exotic Echo' we do not know if the difference is significant or just a result of random sampling. To find out if it is significant we have to do a statistical analysis or test of the two percentages. When I did the test the result was that it is on the borderline of significance. There just might be more double registrations when 'Exotic Echo' is tetraploid. However, that would not tell us why. It could just be that hybridizers who used 'Exotic Echo' as a tetraploid were more likely to cross it with registered double pollen parents. In other words it could just be a bias and not a biologically interesting effect.

Well, that is certainly interesting! When I was looking at the child plants, I was initially surprised to see quite a few doubles. I didn't see as many with the dip children.

What is the main reason that the dips are converted to tets? Is it to get more variation in any future hybrids/children of such tets? (Particularly the bloom patterns, colors, etc.?)

beckygardener said:What is the main reason that the dips are converted to tets? Is it to get more variation in any future hybrids/children of such tets? (Particularly the bloom patterns, colors, etc.?)

Geneticists provide a number of changes that may happen when a plant is converted. I have seen no evidence of more potential variation in tetraploids than in diploids. Every characteristic that is present in tetraploids is also present in diploids or would be present in diploids if there were as many hybridizers working with diploids as there are working with tetraploids and if those hybridizers produced as many diploid seedlings as they produce tetraploid seedlings.

In general, most (but not all) of the interesting characteristics present in tetraploids first appeared in diploids. Those cultivars were then converted to tetraploids to introduce the characteristic into the tetraploid gene pool. Diploids still continue to be converted to tetraploids.

Tetraploids by default have larger cells so they can have thicker leaves, scapes, petals and so on. Those larger cells can also produce new problems, such as scape blasting, in tetraploids. Although diploids can be selected to have thicker cells any tetraploid automatically has larger cells than its diploid version. Also tetraploids seem to be more successful when self-pollinated (but daylily hybridizers very rarely self-pollinate their plants) than diploids.

New characteristics, that is, new mutations are always much easier to find in diploids than in tetraploids. Genetics in tetraploids is more complex than in diploids and before gene engineering and molecular genetics, professional plant breeders would work with diploids and then convert them to tetraploids rather than attempt to work directly with tetraploids. It is important to note that daylily hybridizers do not work in the same way that professional plant breeders work or for the same reasons.

Maurice - Thank you for explaining the conversion tet information. I really didn't understand what that ordeal was all about. But I am still not sure "why?" the plant breeders want to do a conversion? Bigger cells, thicker plant parts, easier to self-pollinate? What is it that most of these growers are trying to acheive by converting dips to tets? Why are they doing it? What is their ultimate goal in doing so? Do they think it makes a better daylily plant?