Viewing post #2573608 by Nightlily

plasko20 said:I do not have experience to say one way or the other.
From what I have gathered on this website, I anticipate that seedlings do not flower normally anyways in their first few years until they settle down into a routine. But that is only from reading other people's comments. So, even 'naturally' flowering daylilies time of flowering is not to be trusted in the very early phase of growth. I could be 100% wrong, I am just going by what others have said about their own seedlings.

Depends on when you start your seeds - if you force plants to grow earlier (inside, under lights) they will have to acclimatize to natural conditions. The same here if I get plants from Northern Germany or Italy. Takes them sometimes 2 years to flower in time.

plasko20 said:Given that your own breeding program is based on time-of-flowering, that is the most important component to you and I can totally see that it may be crazy to mess with that. Having said that, you do not know until you test it. Hypothesis is one thing, but hard data is always the goal to base things on. And without hard data, through testing and observing, we will never know the answer.

plasko20 said:Edited to add: Actually, I just realized that even if you are correct and the GA changed flowering-time permanently this would be exactly what you want. Just spray any daylily you like at a late timepoint and it will fire out a very-late scape. If it keeps doing this yearly then your breeding program is all-set. All it took was a spray bottle, rather than complex hybridization crosses.

I have no idea if a GA-treatment changes something in the plant that works 'forever'. But I tell you a story about tissue culture and daylilies. There are only a few commercial sources for daylilies within the EU and I know 2 of them that propagate their plants with tissue culture (usind a lot of plant hormons, special fertilizers, ...).
I have plants from both sources here in my garden - they did grow well at the producers place, were sold in small clumps (2-3 fans) and they flowered as they should here in my garden the first year.
These plants are now more than 5 seasons in my garden - only 1/2 of them performs normally (growth, bud count, ...); 1/4 flower but do not grow - still 2-3 fans and 1/4 do not flower every year and do not grow either.
One of the sources is a friend of mine - does the tissue-culture propagation on a small scale in his nursery. He told me, that he has to cull a certain amount of plants because they show flaws - and sells only the ones that look like they should. Invisible 'flaws' like weakness in growth are completely hidden by the artificial treatment - so I would assume that this could also happen if you dope your seedlings.