I thought they wouldn't produce seeds if self-pollinated? And I know it is very, very rare for seeds to be produced from a tet x dip (nearly impossible), correct?

Most diploids do not produce any seeds from self-pollinations but there are some that will. Some of those are descended from H. minor. Even when a diploid does produce some seed from a self-pollination the seedlings tend to be less fit than normal because of severe inbreeding depression (offspring from inbreeding are less viable, robust, fertile, etc. than those from cross-pollinations).

Diploid x tetraploid crosses typically (at best) set a pod and then abort it over the next few days and weeks. However, some combinations of parents are able to produce a few seeds and a few seedlings (typically triploids) if sufficient crosses are made.

Thank you, Mauirice!

I had thought I had read that previously somewhere here on the Daylily Forum, but I wasn't sure.

I have a clump of Taffetà Mist, a diploid. It's surrounded by tets only. It had two bee pods that shrivelled and died, one is getting brown on one side, and two new fresh bee pods. I'm letting them grow to see what happens.
Stella the past year aborted every pod. This year aborted the first two. Then I pollinated on purpose with other two dips - taffetà mist, only one seed collected today, pod was dry on one side - and Nairobi Dawn - nice pod.

Then I self-pollinated it, and the pod is really good.

DogsNDaylilies said:
I also have a few where I pollinated them with something else, but made a note that there was already its own pollen on the stigma and self-pollination, though accidental, may have occurred.

That's funny, I do pretty much the same thing.

I have to gather pollen early in the morning before the Bumblebees get to it. Honeybees aren't too bad—they seem to concentrate on nectar (and seem to show up for work a little later than the Bumblebees) but the big, shiny black bees with the large abdomen are the champion pollen thieves and mixers. I call them Bumblebees out of habit, but Bumblebees are fuzzy with yellow stripes. I've been informed that these are a type of Carpenter Bee, but the pictures I've seen online show a more streamlined bee than the ones I have. They're voracious, yet amiable pollen gatherers, and have occasionally made a pass at my hand when I have pistils stuck between all of my fingers.

Even though I remove all of the stamens from the flowers I intend to pollinate that day, the bees will sometimes key on the blossoms and make a pass, often giving the tip of the pistil a light dusting. Most of the time I'll pull a contaminated pistil, but if it's a flower that I'm really serious about using, and appears to have only light contamination, I'll add my pollen, tag it, and add a "+" to the tag to show that there was pollen there before mine, figuring that I might get a couple of seeds which are true to the cross.

Sometimes a snail or slug will eat or obliterate the writing on a tag, and those seeds are a little higher up on the priority list, since I intentionally made the cross. At season's end though, I have so many seed to choose from that the seeds from "+" or otherwise questionable tags don't generally get planted. I don't shield, cover or otherwise protect the pistils I have already crossed, feeling that the nice coating of pollen I've put on them is going to get to the ovary first.

I can't remember ever making an intentional self-cross. I do have a couple of decent seedlings which resulted from bee pods. Several years ago when I first acquired Annette's Magic, there was an untagged pod at the end of the season, so I stuck those seeds in a pot and a couple of very nice flowers resulted. They do seem to be small growers, but then again, Annette's Magic is too. But Annette is also a seed-making machine. Right now it's loaded down with pods on primary and rebloom scapes, and about two weeks ago, what appears to be a second rebloom scape emerged. That's a lot of spunk for a 4-fan plant in a #2 nursery pot.

admmad said:
Diploid x tetraploid crosses typically (at best) set a pod and then abort it over the next few days and weeks. However, some combinations of parents are able to produce a few seeds and a few seedlings (typically triploids) if sufficient crosses are made.

I harvested my first seeds from my Dip X tet cross today still have 2 more pods waiting to ripen.

Ken, back when I used to mark my crosses with paper tags with writing, I kept having the writing obliterated. Finally, I was up and out in the garden early one morning, and caught the culprit in the act - a snail chewing/scraping/whatever the writing off the tag! I was shocked to see it, and thought that surely I must have been the only person in the world to experience this problem, so it is funny (not to you, I am sure) that you are having the same issue!

Iirc the solution that I came up with was to make my tag, then put a piece of Scotch tape over the writing. No more lost data. (I moved to color paper clips because I just generally dislike tags, but even when you combine paper clip colors, eventually you run out of clips or combinations, so for seedling crosses I have been using tags this year.)

Ditto on the carpenter bees as another hybridizing pest... there are some 500 species of carpenter bee https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... ; I don't know if we have Xylocopa californica https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... or some other species here, but they are certainly pollen marauders! Here is a picture of one on 'Sears Tower' (clicky for a better view of the pollen thief):



It is interesting that they seem to go for the lighter colored (and yellow colored) daylilies and those in the sun, first. Today I had very few daylilies in bloom, but late morning there was still untouched pollen on the reddish 'Airdrie', which was in shade.

The first time you encounter these carpenter bees it can be a little scary (because they are so big and the black makes them look menacing) but I have found these giant bees to really be harmless - apart from stealing the pollen. I have read that in general that is the case, that they are not aggressive bees, unless you attack them or disturb their nest. While we do have some honeybees here, almost the only bees to visit the daylilies (in my garden) are the carpenter bees. The honeybees go after the lavenders and the crepe myrtles; it is unusual to see them on a daylily.

Finally, like some others here, sometimes the bees beat me to the pistil, but I am desperate enough to dab my own pollen onto the pistil anyway. That's a pretty rare occurrence, and I will add an extra "bee" paper clip to mark the cross. In general, though, by the end of the season I have enough seeds that I never get around to starting seeds from these mixed pods. I do suspect though that sometimes we may get a bee contribution without having recognized it beforehand (all it takes is one miniscule grain?), or after we have dabbed our own pollen. One of my seedlings has given me some reason for suspicion...

ediblelandscapingsc said:I harvested my first seeds from my Dip X tet cross today still have 2 more pods waiting to ripen.

Hmmm...
How many dip x tet pollinations did you try? What diploid parents? What tetraploid parents? What were the crosses that provided your first seeds?
It will be interesting to know if those seeds germinate successfully.

Arisumi, a geneticist, did a large experiment trying dip/tet crosses.
He tried with 82 different diploids and 75 different tetraploid parents. There were 400 different diploid - tetraploid combinations.
The total number of pollinations was 1,607.
1,085 were diploid x tetraploid and 522 were tetraploid x diploid.
300 pods survived for more than five weeks.
He wrote "Nearly all mature capsules were partially shriveled and discolored when harvested." He harvested capsules after five weeks.
He harvested 1,218 seeds of which 1,063 were defective.
There were 155 normal appearing seeds. From 100 of those he managed to produce 23 germinations and 17 seedlings that survived beyond the young seedling stage.
Of the remaining 55 seeds he examined and found 22 had fully developed embryos. He tried growing those in nutrients. From the 22 embryos he managed to get another 12 seedlings.
Planting in soil his success rate was 17/100 or 17% of normal seeds. Growing in nutrients his success rate was 12/55 or 22% so about the same success rate.
Of the 400 combinations of crosses only 24 produced any viable seedlings. Fifteen of those were tet x dip and nine were dip x tet.
Only four of the 24 combinations produced more than one seedling (three produced two seedlings and one produced three seedlings); they were from tet x dip crosses.
There was a tendency for the ability to successfully cross (tet x dip) to be inherited, as a large number of successful crosses involved certain cultivars in the ancestry of the parents.

It honestly was a mistake but I crossed several flowers that where dips with tet pollen not knowing some of the dips where dips until later, all the pods failed on every dip except Lavender Blush which set a pod with Forbidden Fantasy's pollen first. Some say it may have been pollinated by an insect which is possible but I got 2 more pods later. 2 Lavender Blush X forestlake ragamuffin crosses also formed pods. bugs don't like daylilies too much in my area be it bees or anything else so I have high hopes the crosses are true to what's labeled and will plant them after some time in the fridge. it's funny that Lavender Blush is not only the only dip X tet cross to set a pod but no pods fell off later in development I got 3 blooms and got 3 pods the other 2 are starting to turn yellow so it won't be long on harvesting seeds from them either. The Lavender Blush X Forbidden Fantasy cross gave me 4 seeds 3 of which look good 1 is small and elongated but I still plan on planting it also. When my daylilies where in full swing earlier this year my favorites where Forbidden Fantasy, forestlake ragamuffin, and gram's dream and I used the pollen of all 3 on everything else that was blooming at the time. later after noticing no pods on green arrow, and Ebony circle I decided to look up the Ploidy of all my plants and now have tet or dip wrote on the name tags just in case I forget. Now I have many pods on my dips from using other dip pollen. This makes me more confident that when before the pods had failed no bugs where involved because no other dip produced pods and had bugs been the pollinator I should have had at least 1 pod form on something else.

Interesting about Lavender Blush! It's not a tet conversion by some slim chance is it?

The database shows no offspring with Tet. Lavender Blush so I doubt it but who knows?

Very interesting! Maybe Maurice will get his hands on this cultivar to grow and do some experiments with it!

Interesting, 'Lavender Blush' has six offspring in the AHS database, five diploid and one tet, and the tet is selfed ('Joe's Pallet').

Unfortunately a significant percentage of plants have incorrect ploidy recorded in the AHS database (and when registered). I have posted the percentage in the past. Pittard-R, the hybridizer of Lavender Blush registered 18 plants - all diploids. So I would not expect that 'Lavender Blush' could be a tetraploid registered in error as a diploid.
The other possibility is that the plant labelled as 'Lavender Blush' is not the plant that was registered as 'Lavender Blush'. That the plant identified as 'Lavender Blush' also seems to have been successfully pollinated with two different tetraploids (out of two tetraploids used?) makes it more probable that it is not diploid 'Lavender Blush' but some tetraploid.

@ediblelandscapingsc did you try known diploid pollen on 'Lavender Blush'? Did those crosses take or fail? If they took did the pods abort later?

The registration of a plant from a supposed (probably from an insect pollination rather than a hybridizer's hand self-pollination) selfing of 'Lavender Blush' as a tetraploid is likely to be a typographical error. The same hybridizer registered a self-pollination of 'Stella de Oro' as producing a plant with a red purple eye (Sara's Wink) which is not possible genetically.

Apart from mistaken identity (such as with nursery mix-ups), and incorrectly registered plants ('Starry Day' by its breeding behavior is a diploid, not a tetraploid), there has been at least one case (and are doubtless more) of more than one plant in circulation bearing the same name, due to a lack of registration. I ran into this earlier this year, when I discovered that a particular online (general, not daylily) nursery was selling an unregistered Stella "selection" (so therefore a diploid) under the name of 'Little Miss Sunshine'.

But the AHS database has a registered tetraploid daylily (with specified tetraploid parentage) under this same name.



I think I have read somewhere that the only way to be certain about ploidy is to check the size of the pollen grains under a microscope. I have some suspicions about a few older daylilies, but come bloom season, I keep forgetting to check...

Maurice I did not try to cross it with another dip, It only had 3 blooms the first was pollinated with Forbidden Fantasy the other 2 with forestlake ragamuffin but I may know someone who has tried it with other dips in the past @bxncbx can you please help.

I also just contacted Terry McGarty the hybridizer of Joe's Pallet to see if he could shed some light on the situation, as soon as he gets back with me I'll let everyone know what he said.

Polymerous said:I think I have read somewhere that the only way to be certain about ploidy is to check the size of the pollen grains under a microscope. I have some suspicions about a few older daylilies, but come bloom season, I keep forgetting to check...

If a grower has a diploid version of a cultivar and they also have the tetraploid version of the same cultivar then it is possible to check pollen sizes or various other cell sizes to determine whether the tetraploid version really is tetraploid. Most pollen develops from tissue layer 2 of the growing point. There are three tissue layers in the growing point. A very small fraction of pollen in daylilies develops from tissue layer 1 and none develops from tissue layer 3. So, if the pollen is approximately twice the volume of the diploid plant's pollen (or approximately 30% larger in any linear dimension) then layer 2 of the putative 'tetraploid' plant is confirmed as tetraploid.

However, if one simply has a plant of unknown ploidy then one cannot be certain whether it is diploid or tetraploid by examining pollen or guard cell sizes, etc. The reason is that for the general population of daylilies, diploid cell sizes are not completely separate from tetraploid cell sizes. The larger diploid cell sizes overlap the smaller tetraploid cell sizes.

Basically the only way to be certain a plant is tetraploid (derived from a tet x tet cross or a tet grown from seed) is to do a root squash and chromosome count microscopically and count 44 chromosomes in the cells (with the appropriate controls and internal standards, flow cytometry can provide a valid estimate that the plant has the appropriate amount of DNA to be a tetraploid).

Sorry Daniel but I'm no help. Lavender Blush only bloomed for me in 2014 when it was a new plant in my garden. I didn't try to do any crosses with it for that reason. While it is still alive, it isn't very happy and I'm not sure it will ever bloom again for me (or at least not anytime soon). I have no luck with lavender daylilies.

@ediblelandscapingsc

but I may know someone who has tried it with other dips in the past bxncbx can you please help.

Unless bxncbx received her plant from you or you received your plant from bxncbx, the outcome of crosses might not be the same, since there may be two different plants both identified with the same name available.

edited: Cross posted with bxncbx, but it does not affect the outcome.

she is who I got the plant from so I was hoping she could help Maybe Terry McGarty will get back with me soon I'll keep you updated.