What I seem to have finally settled into is a routine which uses the first letter of the pod parent. If I were really going to be purely objective about the merits of each seedling, I should not do such a thing... however, tagging the seedlings that way gives me some hint of what traits I should be looking for in the seedlings, or what that cross was all about.
For example, let's take two pod parents (these are daylilies but the same approach is applicable to irises..) 'Arctic Lace' (a near white) and 'Hip to be Square' (a polymerous daylily). Seedlings labeled
A-n-yy-# tell me that this seedling was from 'Arctic Lace' (
A), the particular cross was cross
n ('Arctic Lace' cross n, indicating the pollen parent), the seed was harvested in year
yy, and (when I get down to selecting and labeling individual seedlings) this is (selected) seedling number
# from that cross. Since I only use 'Arctic Lace' in near-white crosses, and it is an EMO (early morning opener), then just looking at that label tells me that what I was hoping for in that cross was near-white seedlings that are also EMOs.
Similar,
H-n-yy-# tells me that the seedling was from 'Hip to be Square', which in turn tells me that I am looking for any signs of the polymerous trait.
Some years I may use more than one pod parent with the same beginning initial. The (easier for labeling) choice there is to just continue using the single letter approach, and then the combination of that letter and the
n designates the particular cross and thus the pod parent. So, for example, given pod parents 'Ballerina on Ice' and 'Belle of Ashwood' ,
B-1-yy-# seedlings could indicate a cross from 'Ballerina on Ice', whereas
B-2-yy-# seedlings might be those from a 'Belle of Ashwood' cross. The alternate labeling choice would be to use a combination of initials to differentiate the parents. In such a scheme, 'Ballerina on Ice' would be indicated by 'BoI' and 'Belle of Ashwood' by 'BoA", and their respective seedlings would thus be designated BoI-n-yy-# and BoA-n-yy-#. This second approach, however, is a bit more cumbersome for labeling, and if I am not looking for any particularly rare or special traits from the parents (where a fuller labeling would be helpful), then it is not really necessary.
If any of that makes sense.
As Tom noted, people use what works for them.
