beckygardener said:So, basically, they are slightly different, but typically not noticeable to the naked eye? Does there come a point in propagation where the difference does become noticeable in appearance?
Quite likely, if one works with a cultivar in the same way and with the same numbers as the Easter lily growers do. For them the differences become too much about every ten years when they more or less reinitialize their bulb populations.
How abnormal would a scape with 4-5 proliferations growing together be?
Not very, unless it happened more or less all the time or the majority of the time for a specific cultivar in a specific location/with a specific history and did not happen for that cultivar in a nearby location growing in similar conditions but that had been separated from the other population for many generations/years (depending on how long it took a fan to flower).
Differences between two different fans of the same cultivar will be common. Most of the time two fans of the same cultivar will be different due to differences in growing environment, size, etc. Gardeners will not usually be in a position to identify any changes in cultivars due to inherited mutations that have been accumulated over time. To do so one must have different populations of the same cultivar that have been separated for many generations and that are then brought back into the same growing environment and compared.
Most differences in characteristics between different individual fans of the same cultivar noticed by daylily growers are environmental. There is no way a grower can identify whether any such differences are genetic except through rigorous, well designed objective experiments. Most environmental effects are temporary or short-term.
