A few years ago, when we first got started in hybridizing, we attended the region 11 winter gathering.
Jamie Gossard was a guest speaker and he did a demonstration of a diploid conversion. Ashton has been wanting to try a conversion ever since then. We have not acquired the chemicals and attempted a conversion but may at some point. I am waiting until we create a great diploid and have enough increase to kill a few.

Terry

Thank you for your answer to my question, Maurice!

@kidfishing Did your Tet Super Fancy Face and Tet Texas Kaleidoscope end up being tets or dips? The draw of the newer conversions patterns got me to invest in tet Almira Buffalo Bone Jackson. It won't bloom this year but I'm looking forward to using it next year. If your tet conversions ended up being tets did you notice a better percentage of takes once your plants got older?

Daniel,
We do have some seedlings from the tet conversions but they have been difficult to use. Our conversions are not reliable in general. It could be that not all pollen is tetraploid. Possibly the conversions still send up diploid scapes. I don't get into scientific evaluation of the pollen, although this could be done. We just dab it on other flowers to try and get viable seeds. In general our conversions are not very good garden plants. The best converted plant we have is tet Skinwalker but so far no seed pods on it or from the pollen. There has been no change over time as we get very few pods from the conversions. One thing that has happened, since the pollinations are not successful it makes us not want to use them. If the goal is to get seeds then why use something that is successful one out of a hundred. Better to use the blooms with something that gives a better chance of setting seeds.
I have decided the best way to go is to get a plant from the conversion that you want to use. Your genetics are a little diluted but reliable. We do have 3 seedlings from crossing Tet Texas Kaleidoscope with Tet Super Fancy Face. Considering these are reliable tetraploids, we now use them rather than the parents. Here they are.







We also purchased a plant registerd from Tet Colorful Etchings and another registered from Tet Rose F Kennedy. We dedided this would be better than getting the conversions.

Due to ideal weather from earlier season, I was able to set pods on a good number of daylilies from my tet RFK pollen. From the two blooms that I got, I was able to set about 12 pods on various tet daylilies blooming at the time. Though the pod parents are not what I intended to cross tet RFK with, I am excited and happy to get these pods nonetheless. My question is how do you know when the tet conversion reverts back to the dip?

Karen,
You would have examine the pollen on the blooms. It would require you to know enough to evaluate pollen for chromosome count under a microscope. There is a method, flow cytometry that is supposed to accurately measure daylily ploidy. You can read about this @ Heavenly Gardens website. An easier test of ploidy would be to use the pollen on both dip and tet cultivars and if you get seeds, see which survive to maturity and are viable. We have done this experiment with an unknown seedling. I set pods on both dips and tets but after a month the tet pods aborted and the dips survived to mature.