I happened to be researching Frankly Scarlet, which is registered as a tetraploid. There is one child plant, Molten Morning. Molten Morning is registered as a diploid. The cross was Frankly Scarlet X H. fluva "Kwanso". " H. fluva "Kwanso" is a triploid. Can someone explain to me how this happens--obviously, I know nothing, but would like to know. I thought triploids were sterile.

Well, being there is presently a thread discussion about the real Tet 'Frankly Scarlet' and the impostor Frankly Scarlet that is a dip, and being the Kwanso plants are so hard for me to correctly ID, I can certainly see where such a listing could actually be wrong.

Hemerocallis fulva 'Kwanso' would not normally be able to be a pod parent because it has no normal female flower parts. Its pollen could be usable though and it's difficult but not impossible in theory to get viable seeds from other daylilies using triploid pollen. There are threads on that latter topic elsewhere in the daylily forum. It's surprising it is listed first in the parentage, but perhaps pod x pollen was reversed, or it was the wrong 'Kwanso' (I've occasionally seen 'Europa', the single flowered but also triploid ditch lily, referred to as 'Kwanso'). I assume there's no way to know which 'Frankly Scarlet' is the other parent.

I should add that I only said I thought the unregistered 'Frankly Scarlet' was a dip but I can't find any reference confirming that on the web thus far.