Should this matter? The daylily I was interested in is priced at only $35.00, but I've seen this for hundred dollar daylilies as well. I want a beautiful flower to look at, but I also want to hybridize with them. I love to know the background of the cultivars I intend to use - as far back as possible. I love looking them up here on the database, in the forums, as well as googling them.

Also, I feel that I don't want to promote this kind of thing. Could it possibly be a bee pod that fell off and rolled away? Pretty much every plant they are selling?

Some hybridizers develop their own lines and use their own seedling. For example take BLUE BUBBLE , seeds that James Gossard bought from Bob Faulkner.

((Almira Buffalo Bone Jackson x Faulkner sdlg) x (Picasso's Paint Brush sib x Faulkner sdlg)) x (Almira Buffalo Bone Jackson sib x (Faulkner sdlg x Almira Buffalo Bone Jackson sib))

It's too much work writing this out for every plants and it means nothing to the average person because most of the plants used are not registered. Sometimes hybridizers have four to five sibs and do not record which plant was used. That's probably why Faulkner sdlg was used.

I try to avoid them because the research is important to me. My location requires evergreens without dormants in the background. This is a semi-tropical area that doesn't lend itself to anything that has dormant genes.

Thankfully, I can go to Dan Trimmer and say that this is what I have to have. He respects it and will help me find what I need. Unless I trust people, I need to research. With seedling designations or unknown designations, I can't assure myself that the daylilies will grow in this garden. I don't want to waste my money, either!!!

I like knowing, but then I like working with small starting gene pools (ie, I'll probably only buy around 6 of a plant and made sure they are very diverse and then only add a new plant or two if I'm missing a trait) so a lot of checking the history of things (and whether they've had a lot of offspring or not...it becomes important if you are working with some plants like roses due to fertility issues and poor germination). I have an odd approach, but I'm doing it for my own self interest than anything else.

Having said that, if I were to ever introduce something it'd be sdlg x sdlg because I honestly have no idea...I could tell you every cultivar or species in the gene pool I'm working with and that the specimen is a product of heavily selecting for a list of traits. But chances are I will have mixed pollen from a few plants with similar traits, collected pods from similar mother plants and lumped the seed together in loosely defined groups (I need to know roughly what I'm expecting improvements on so I can cull!) and be over 5 generations from those initial cultivars and be loosely in the area of having created a strain than a unique cultivar as such.

TLDR. If you're very interested in the plant, I'd ask the breeder if possible. They may not be conventional in their approach but they may have a lot of info about the cultivar and it's genetic history that just doesn't fit in the singular template that the industry created. If they can't/won't tell you anything though then they are probably being intentionally secretive and as you said you may not want to encourage that by purchasing.

Wow, Joe, with that example, I'd be doing a lot of cutting and pasting!

Thank's you guys, for helping me understand! If you're using plants you hybridized yourself, such as "bridge plants", they wouldn't necessarily be named and registered. So, you're honestly giving all the info you have.

Arlene, I never gave it a thought that the parents might have differing traits that could be so negative! People have written on this forum that they've lost plants after growing them successfully for two or three years. Just when you'd think those plants would be nicely settled in and gonna start to really strut their stuff. But, no! Also, the ones that become smaller every year, then just go away. It can be heartbreaking, as well as expensive.

Josie, I've lost a lot of money on daylilies! Recently I've bought off the Daylily Auction to try to minimize my losses. Luckily, my husband doesn't mind--I do tell him when it happens!. Anyway, Dan and Jane Trimmer are very kind to me and I take them cookies or whatever I've baked the day before. I'll be going there in March when he releases his 2017 plants. I've asked him to pot up 2 of the choices I've made. They are using my photo of one of them. We gab about plants and their plans. It makes for a lovely day and I come home with 2 or 3 plants that will be in pots until next fall. I can't plant in March because my daylilies will have started to bud out. I will also have flowers in mid to late March. Additionally the plants won't be able to adapt to the extreme temperature changes we have from March 1 to April 1--we go from a mild winter to a very warm spring and the plants will just wilt and die if they have been in my boxes for just 30 days. So they stay in their pots and I can move them into shade when the temperatures rise.

Having the cross properly recorded is, I think, a very important thing. It is a window into all the genetic traits that can influence the seedlings it produces. Some hybridizers embraced it wholeheartedly when it was first put in place---other hybridizers, not so much. Dan Trimmer and Pat Stamile are good examples of the the ones who embraced it. The Salters , not so much. When researching daylilies one must keep in mind that the registration process is really not that old. Hopefully, all hybridizers in the future will register all cross information they have on the flowers they register, no matter how long the cross is. That way, as time goes on, we will have a more accurate database to work from. One can get more information about a particular plant by communicating with the hybridizer directly, because most of them keep records of what they do. They could tell you what "seedling" means. The problem with that is what does one do when the hybridizer is deceased. Any record of the "seedling" will then be lost.
I know Dan from when he visited our Region 15 conference that we hosted. I arranged for him to speak, and then had the great pleasure of escorting him through the process to make sure everything went well for him. Dan is a great hybridizer, and wonderful person. He has a colorful background in law enforcement and real estate. If you get a chance to talk with him, you will find an instant friend.

Sscape said: Some hybridizers embraced it wholeheartedly when it was first put in place---other hybridizers, not so much. Dan Trimmer and Pat Stamile are good examples of the the ones who embraced it. The Salters , not so much. When researching daylilies one must keep in mind that the registration process is really not that old.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding something but crosses have optionally been included going back to the first Hemerocallis check list that covered the period 1893 to 1957.

To add to what have been said, a picture of the seedling certainly would be appreciated. I see several hybridizers that for the most part don't even mention the parents in their comments.

Arlene, I can't even imagine seeing your daylilies flowering in March.


If the hybridizers didn't want to take up so much room on their website, they could just include it on the database when the daylily is registered. We're all gonna go there anyway, to see the garden pics.

Wow, I just googled this - "oldest registered daylily", and read this fascinating discussion - The thread "Unregistered Daylilies with Names" in Daylilies forum

I LOVE this website!

Sorry, I meant we can come here to see garden pics, after we have been at the AHS!

It's nice to know all the parentage info, and I appreciate that Stamile and Trimmer have all that down. But if I see a daylily I really love, and its parents were seedling x seedling, I buy it and cross it. I just planted a cross that is two of my pink seedlings. I know what the pod parent is, but I'm unsure which of my other two pink seedlings was the pollen parent. Sometimes tags get blown off in storms, and sometimes the names fade badly. Those possible pink parents have very different traits - one is a hard dormant and the other is an evergreen. So if the resulting kid from that cross is fabulous, I would have to register it with seedling as the pollen parent, even though I might have a 90% idea which plant fathered it. Asking the hybridizer is a good idea. Sometimes they can narrow it down for you.

Very true, that sometimes you don't know with 100% certainty what the pollen parent was. In that case you could always use Pod Parent Name x unknown.... unless the current registration rules don't allow for such. (Iirc I think that the Reinkes used to charmingly use "x Chance" for bee pods. 'Annabelle's Ghost' was the result of one such "chance" cross.)

my new "do not buy" list:
No Parent Info
Can't Afford
Not Pink or White
Rust Bucket
Not a Dormant
No Room

I guess there's worse things, but it skeeves me out when they don't list at least one parent, like it's an immaculate conception or something. So, when you see unknown x unknown it could actually mean sdlg x sdlg.

No, it couldn't. It doesn't mean the same thing at all. I'm so confused!

I see on this forum where people show their seedlings with the numbers of the year and which seedling it is. Now, that doesn't bother me at all, cause I've seen how conscientious the breeders on this forum are. I'd snatch that seedling up in a second! I'd use those numbers on the registration of the seedling, and of it's kids. Now THAT would get hard to write! (maybe not a good idea.)

Unfortunately there is a registered daylily called 'Chance'.

Chance (Craig-TI., 1964)
height 32 in.(81 cm), bloom 6 in.(15 cm), season EE, Rebloom, Semi-Evergreen, Diploid, Fragrant, Deep yellow with light rose copper halo and brass throat. (Desert Gold × sdlg) Awards: None as of current year.

Really? Dang, I guess I am wrong then, sorry about that!

(I was sure, from reading years ago, that they had registered some plants from bee crosses, and I always took "Chance" to mean that. Sorry for any confusion!)

Perhaps its both a cultivar and was used to mean bee crosses?

Since this one is a tetraploid and 'Chance' is a diploid perhaps it is both.

Stephens Red John (Reinke, 1995)
height 40 in.(102 cm), bloom 7 in.(18 cm), season MLa, Dormant, Tetraploid, Fragrant, Red with scarlet band above green-gold throat. (Segramoor × Chance) Awards: None as of current year.

@Josieskid no pink, no white ?

Several years we had a well known hybridizer do a program for our club, this person said they did not have the time to record the crosses, I never bought another daylily from that person. If you don't have time to keep records you should not be have time to make the cross. We all have had exceptions where we don't know the pollen parent but not recording the pod parent is just pure and simple wrong. I have sold lots of seedlings and never tried to sell one without the parentage listed, and I don't think most people would buy a seedling not knowing the parentage so why buy a registered daylily not knowing who the parents are. This is just my rant and not intended to offend anyone.