As I was collecting seeds from pods, I noticed that one of the seeds had germinated inside the pod. So of course I sowed it using my styrofoam cup method along with 5 other seeds from the same pod. I then decided to sow several crosses in their respective cups (none of which had cold stratification). All seeds were recently collected from the pod parent. What is interesting is that this particular cross germinated 5 out of 6 seeds so far. A different cross germinated 1 seed out of 6 and the other 4 cups have had zero germination at this point.

Now my data keeping is the pits this year, so I do not know the day I actually sowed all these seeds. But it had to have been only a week or so ago because the one seed had already germinated when I planted it in the cup.

I had decided to see if they needed cold stratification to germinate quickly. (Most seed crosses apparently do.) But this particular cross does not. The cross is CCC03 x Big Snowbird. Now the interesting thing is that Big Snowbird (pollen parent) is not listed as to whether it is an ev, sev, or dor, but it's genetics has a variety of parents that cover all bases. The pod parent is CCC03 (Laughing Clown (ev) x Instant Graffiti (dor)) which has a mix of ev and dor genes.

So what I am wondering is ....

If the parents have ev in them, does that mean that any seeds produced might germinate right away? Does that also mean that the seedling will be ev?

Has there been a study on this?

Here is the cup showing the 5 out of 6 that germinated right away. One of them you can see is a white seedling (which will likely die):

The other cup that had a lone seed germinate so far, is CCC01 x Wild One. CCC01 is a seedling of Laughing Clown (ev) x Zanti Misfit (sev). Wild One is listed as a dormant. So this seedling covers all ranges. There were 6 seeds planted in this cup with only 1 currently germinated.

Some daylily seeds will germinate right away whatever the foliage habit of the parents and yes there have been studies on it from that perspective.

One might speculate that lack of seed dormancy in a whole batch relates to other factors such as the climate the seeds matured in (and the time of flowering), unintentional stratification, seed dormancy wearing off during storage, or whether seed dormancy has been selected out by a hybridizer. There might be other possibilities that aren't coming to me right now.

By selected out I mean that some people only keep the first seeds to germinate thinking that later ones are weaker (not understanding the concept of seed dormancy), or just don't bother to wait for the later ones, or assume they won't come up. Someone who stratifies is not selecting against seed dormancy.

Edited, forgot to say that no, germinating right away does not necessarily mean th seedling will be ev.

Sue - So do these 5 seeds that germinated from the CCC03 x Big Snowbird cross have no seed dormancy?

If they germinated in a week from starting then no they did not have seed dormancy at the time you planted them. That may nor may not mean they could have seed dormancy had you planted them some other time.

I have 6 cups of seeds of different crosses. I think most of the cups have 5 or 6 seeds in them. I must admit I was surprised to see one cup with 83% germination, 1 cups with 16% germination, and the other 4 cups with 0% germination at this point.

Now does drying seeds have any correlation to this? The other cups of seeds had been drying for a few days. I planted the CCC03 x Big Snowbird seeds without letting them dry for a couple of days because the 1 seed had already germinated. Could planting them right away have anything to do with quick germination? If the seed coat is not completely hardened, could that cause quicker germination?

beckygardener said:

Now does drying seeds have any correlation to this? The other cups of seeds had been drying for a few days. I planted the CCC03 x Big Snowbird seeds without letting them dry for a couple of days because the 1 seed had already germinated. Could planting them right away have anything to do with quick germination? If the seed coat is not completely hardened, could that cause quicker germination?

Yes, possibly, to most of the above. The black coating on the seed coat forms quite early on and I don't think it would harden or develop more after harvest. It's not a hard seed coat that is the cause of seed dormancy in daylilies although it is in some other plants. I suspect it may be that idea that prompts some people to soak daylily seeds in water, whereas in fact water soaking slows down their germination.

Sue - All this time I thought that the seeds needed to be dried a couple of days before bagging, tagging, and putting them in the refrigerator for cold stratification. And I also thought the seed coat had to be soften to germinate. Wow! I just re-learned what I thought I knew. Thank you!!!

I believe the idea of drying for a few days before refrigerating is to lower the risk of mold on the seeds during storage. It takes longer than a few days to dry daylily seeds significantly internally. Putting dry seeds in the fridge does not stratify them, just stores them without much affecting seed dormancy. That's why we stratify in damp media or add some drops of water so that the seeds can rehydrate, because dry dormant seeds do not respond to chilling.

So what is the best strategy to store? Dry the seeds for a day or more .... or ..... put them in the refrigerator right away?

For storing you're probably safer to dry them a bit. Trial and error will tell you how long. Some people just drop them into Dixie cups for a couple of weeks and then bag and refrigerate. Others just dry for a couple of days. In climates like mine, where the seeds are harvested later and climate not hot and humid during the storage period, they don't even need to be stored in the fridge to last until the next year. Then when you're ready, stratify for a few weeks before starting at room temp.

Immediate stratification after harvest is a bit of a grey area. The question is are the fresh seeds hydrated enough to respond to chilling without damp media? One study I saw actually just refrigerated the whole pods! So it rather depends on whether your aim with right away is storage or stratification.

Interesting. My aim would be stratification because the seeds are indoors in A/C climate not hot and humid weather like it is outside. And I plan to start many of them in August. How many weeks is recommended for stratification? 4 weeks? 6 weeks? for best results of quick germination when sowed?

Then damp vermiculite, or perlite, damp kitchen paper or whatever (damp peat moss is not good if you want to separate the seeds after stratification because the seeds are dark too and hard to pick out) for 4 to 6 weeks. If you can't make up your mind do 5 I wouldn't bother going over 6, and for some 3 weeks or even less works. The time depends on the individual seed so you have to cater for the longer ones. Then move them to room temp for germination.

You're very welcome, and thanks for the acorn There are some things we know about daylily seeds, some things we don't know and some things we can guess at. Because they can behave differently under different circumstances there often seems to be contradiction. In some cases rather than a certain technique actually doing something, the reality can be that the seeds germinated in spite of rather than because of it. Same thing if the seeds were non-dormant for whatever reason, someone may go through some complicated procedure and think it worked when the seeds would have germinated just as well if planted without any pre-treatment. Bottom line is that if they don't all germinate within one to three weeks of planting at room temp they would have benefited from stratification.

I'll jump in with my usual stupid question.
The few grower/hybrydizer in Italy claim that diploids can be sowed immediately. while tets requires at least 45 days of refrigeration, but they mean dry refrigeration. This maybe is due to the will of keeping a secret for themselves (you know, kinda the hidden trick they don't want to tell), but what about dips/tets sowing? Is there some study in this?

BTW I have seed from a cross with H.Citrina. Just one sprouted but all produced the small root beginning while in peroxide solution. Since the small seedling seems suffering maybe the seeds were not good?

What they are saying about dips and tets and refrigerating dry is rubbish

For the second question, in what way is the seedling suffering and is it still in the peroxide?

Thanks Sue, I really don't know how these growers work!
Sorry I wrote a non sense sentence for the seeds. I put 5 seeds of H. Citrina x Born Yesterday in peroxide the past month (they were in the fridge, but dry). All of them "opened" and put out the small white radicle. So I put them all in vermiculite but only one put out leaves. The others did nothing for a month. Not mold, not dryness, but they are doing nothing even if the small radicle was there.

What strength was the peroxide solution? I would say damp chilling is more reliable than peroxide. Assuming the vermiculite is damp, can you put the container of seeds back in the fridge for a few weeks?

Too late.. I tossed them.
I still have other 4 or 5 to try.
I always use a 20% solution.

I had not good luck with damp chilling until now, surely I'm doing something wrong. I always get mold.