For what it is worth, I have a very focused line bred program and would not buy any plant that does not have parentage information. One thing you should know is that even if the hybridizer provides parentage information on the registration form, i.e., pod parent: Seedling (blah blah x blah) x (blah x blah blah), the registration can come back as SEEDLING without the blah blah info. This was particularly true under the administration of one particular registrar but it has happened as recently as this year. So it is not always the fault of the person who registered a plant that information is incomplete on the official registration. I made the mistake of including an unregistered daylily from Goldner (garden name "Cabbage Butterfly") as a parent and because that plant was not registered, that one was changed to "seedling" as well. While you can often find parentage on web sites and in garden catalogs, it is of concern to me on the older cultivars where hybridizers have passed away or no longer keep the plant on their web page. I am starting to eliminate some of my own registrations from my web site due to lack of garden space to continue selling them.
Fear of having someone copying your cross should not be a factor in providing complete registration information. There is only about a 1 in 10,000 chance of someone coming up with a look alike to your registration. I personally am not able to completely explore every cross that I make and appreciate people discovering "what else" might be in my gene pool that I've overlooked.
Unknowns are completely understandable....things happen.....tags fade or get destroyed, markers get broken, trees fall on your seedling bed, the cat upsets 10 seedling cups, etc. I've had a few where I've forgotten to scribble out a tag before using the other side so it's an "either/or" in my records that must be recorded as an unknown for registration purposes. MANY times the hybridizer who keeps meticulous records can tell you their "best guess" or what the unknown probably is. I think keeping records is important not only for line breeding but also for NOT making an unproductive cross over and over again. Some daylilies consistently give ugly kids. And it's a waste of your space using bad parents.
