Just curious. Is it possible for seeds in a bee pod to have multiple parents? I have three seedlings from a bee pod. Two are blooming for the first time this year. The first bloomed a couple of days ago and I was sure I had figured out the pollen parent. But the second seedling bloomed today and looks more like another contender for pollen parent. Just wondering if that would be possible (like kittens in a litter) or not.

I tried looking at the parents of the possible pollen donors but they aren't all listed so the second seedling could resemble a grandparent and I wouldn't know.

Certainly, if a pollinator gets pollen from one daylily and pollinates another with it you have a cross.

Yes but what if the pollinator has picked up pollen from three different daylilies. And a bit of pollen from each gets on the pistil. If I got three seeds could each be a different cross?

A female cat can mate with multiple males and have kittens in the same litter with different fathers. Has this ever been seen/tried in daylilies?

Presumably that can happen since each individual seed is fertilized by a different pollen grain.

Edited to clarify that it is not the pollen grain itself that travels down to the ovary. The pollen grows a tube from the stigma to the ovule, along which the male cells travel.

Oh, you are trying to figure out the parents from a bee pod? Good luck with that. I think seedlings from known parents often are hard to see resemblances in.

Seedfork I was trying to guess but I know I'll never really know. But it got me thinking about how the seeds were created in the first place. That and all the kittens running around my yard knocking off scapes.

Sooby you answered my question. I wasn't sure if the first pollen grain did something to prevent fertilization from other pollen (like in rats). Thanks for the information!