I have thought long and hard about writing this post and possibly causing this thread to continue being read and producing misleading comments.
It is clear to me that Edgar has misinterpreted and misunderstood my posts. I make posts that are usually only about science and are factual and which usually do not have any of my opinions. Yet there are comments in some of these posts that appear to be about my opinions. In fact, they are not about my opinions but are based on inappropriate assumptions being made about my factual statements.
I did not intend to continue posting since I consider that anyone may believe whatever they wish to believe. I try to deal only with science and what is known and accepted as facts by science. Once I am aware that someone may not accept scientific facts then I consider that the value in commenting on their posts is to provide the scientific factual side to other readers.
This post will examine various previous posts and provide the scientific reasoning and where necessary will correct any erroneous assumptions about my opinions.
The initial observation by Edgar
" I have always felt that Stella de Oro was underutilized as gene pool.
I crossed her selfed.
Pollen and Pod parent were same bloom."
and
" Even in breeding that close the offspring were all over as far as the following:"
and
"Color the light yellow to golden yellow didn't surprise me. The various shades of red and some with eyes did."
Many of us know Mendel's Laws. One of them is the law of dominance. We either accept that law or we believe something different and do not accept it. Arisumi, a research geneticist, did the daylily crosses to examine the inheritance of red and yellow flower colours in daylilies. He determined that red is dominant to yellow flower colour which also means that yellow flower colour is recessive to red flower colour. That means pollinating a yellow flower with pollen from a yellow flower cannot produce seedlings that have any red in their flowers if we accept Mendel's law of dominance - it can only produce yellow seedlings.
Genetically a diploid yellow flowered daylily would be yy. Self-pollinating a diploid yellow flowered daylily or crossing two diploid yellow flowered daylilies with each other would be yy X yy and can only produce yy seedlings - yellow flowered daylilies. A diploid red flowered daylily can be genetically Yy or YY. Yellow flowered daylilies such as Stella de Oro do not have the Y allele and cannot produce red in the flowers of their seedlings from self-pollinations.
If we do not accept that law then we can believe whatever we like.
We cannot say anything about the parentage of any of the yellow seedlings because hand self pollinations of Stella de Oro x Stella de Oro will produce yellow flowered seedlings and natural cross pollinations of Stella de Oro x any unknown diploid yellow flowered daylilies will also produce yellow flowered seedlings.
We know that Stella de Oro can produce pods and seeds without being hand pollinated. That is a fact. That means that natural pollinations can and do occur. If seedlings produced from pods by self pollinations have red in their flowers they were not produced by pollen from Stella - they were not produced by the hand pollinations. They were produced by natural insect pollinations. They were not produced by self pollinations. They were produced by natural cross-pollinations.
We can accept that, if we accept Mendel's law of dominance or we can deny it and believe whatever we would like to believe.
There is only one conclusion that follows from that - it is that the parentage of the seedlings with any red in their flowers is not Stella de Oro x Stella de Oro. The parentage is Stella de Oro x Unknown. That is a factual conclusion. It is not an opinion. We can accept it or not accept it and believe anything we want.
That factual conclusion does not provide any information about my opinion of hybridizers or hybridizing. It is, in fact, completely irrelevant to my opinion of hybridizers or hybridizing.
In later posts I provided a factual estimate of the percentage of seeds that were produced in crosses that were likely to have been from natural pollinations and that natural pollinations are more likely when the plants are genetically close to the original species and less likely the more generations that separate daylilies from their species ancestors. Those are factual observations. They are not opinions. None of those facts can be interpreted to mean that hand pollinations do not produce any seedlings with a desired parentage. Those factual observations do not provide any information about my opinions of hybridizers or hybridizing. Nor do they have any effect on my opinions of hybridizers or hybridizing.
None of the facts that I posted imply anything about my opinions regarding hybridizers or hybridizing.
There are daylily enthusiasts who do not hand pollinate the daylilies in their gardens. They collect the seeds from naturally produced pods and plant them. They may register some of those seedlings. Why not? That is perfectly fine. People have been doing the same thing with our crop plants for thousands of years. When a daylily hybridizer hand pollinates a daylily flower without taking any precautions to prevent possible natural pollinations they accept the risk that some of the seedlings may not be from their hand pollinations. That is also perfectly fine. In most crosses it is not possible to estimate how many seedlings might be from natural pollinations. There is only one significant conclusion to that. It means that the parentage provided when a seedling from such a cross is registered has a chance of being incorrect. How much of a chance is unknown. That depends on how often the particular pod parent is naturally pollinated and what the hybridizer might possibly have done, if anything, to reduce those chances. If some of the seedlings are from natural pollinations it does not mean all of the seedlings might be. One also has to understand that if the cross involved a species daylily as the pod parent there might be more seeds produced by a natural pollination than if the pod parent was a more modern cultivar. That still does not mean that every seed in every pod was from a natural pollination. It is not correct to assume that. Crosses between modern cultivars may have a negligible chance of producing pods from natural pollinations or they may not.
Again, none of those facts can be used to imply anything about my opinions of hybridizing and hybridizers.
Daylily hybridizers simply need to be aware that some of their seedlings may not have the parentage that they think they have based on their hand pollinations. And that is not the end of the world. Hybridizing is not only based on making hand pollinations. There are many parts to hybridizing. Selecting which plants to grow or introduce is one of those parts. That can be done with seedlings produced from natural pollinations and it can be done with seedlings produced from hand pollinations. Not being 100.0% certain of the parentage does not change that hybridizing is more than hand pollinating a daylily flower.
So what is the gist of this post and of my previous posts on this topic?
1) It is that if you read that a daylily with red in its flower has two yellow flowered parents then you know that the parentage is incorrect.
2) That if you assume that
EVERY seedling you grow was produced by your hand pollinations made in natural conditions and you did not use "safe" hybridizing methods as
Whatley (clickable) wrote about, (and both professional geneticists and professional plant breeders use) then that is incorrect.
None of the scientific facts I have posted about nor any of the conclusions based on them have anything to do with my opinions about hybridizers or hybridizing and anyone implying or suggesting that they do is stating their own misinterpretations, opinions, or beliefs - not mine.
