I'm hoping someone can enlighten me on this. I have assumed that if you cross two Evergreen daylilies, the resulting seedlings would be Evergreens. But is this true? Could you also get Semi-Evergreen and Dormant seedlings? If you use two Dormants, would all the seedlings be Dormants?

And also, what is the difference between the foliage on Dormant and Semi-Evergreen daylilies? I know that Dormants die back in the winter whereas Evergreens do not, but what about Semi-Evergreens?

Semi-evergreens tend to still have some green in our winters. As far as your hybridizing question goes, as much as tetraploids have been inbred, I think anything is possible.

Betty, Cindy is correct about anything is possible. If you cross two daylilies they both will have five generations of genes to deal with so any foliage is possible. I would think if you cross to dormants the odd of getting dormant seedlings would be greater than crossing two evergreens but there's no guarantee. Here the simi evergreens will have 4-5 inches of foliage all winter, the dormants will have 1-2 inches of foliage, or if a hard dormant will go completely underground(Zone 8-9). I said on the other site that several of the big guys in Florida register everything simi evergreen every year, now how is that possible? I would think out of the thousands of seedlings grown down there, most would be evergreens. Most dormants do not do well here so I can understand them not registering many dormants, but to never register an evergreen, whats that about? Just asking.

Doesn't matter if it's dor/sev/eve, you will see no green daylily foliage here when the snow melts in the spring.

Thanks guys! Invaluable information for me! And I'm so glad you've called attention to the fact that some hybridizers register everything as semi-evergreens, Fred, whereas that probably is simply not possible with the gene pool that is involved. This is great to know, as I was looking up registrations in the AHS database and taking that information as gospel -- and now I know I should put a question mark there in my mind rather than taking it for granted that the information is correct.

Thanks again!

As far as the AHS site the registar has to enter the information as the hybridizer summit's it. About the only thing that they question is the name to make sure it's legal, and has not been used in the pass.

I agree you will get a mix of foliage types. If you cross two of the same type, your most likely to get predominantly that type, but if you have a large enough sample of seeds, I think you would get all types. If you only have two seeds, they might be the same type as the parent, but if you had 100 seeds of the same cross, perhaps you would see 85 seedlings the same as the parents and the remaining seedlings would be some other foliage type or types ( for example- percent would vary within each cross).

Thanks again guys! Great info!