If you go to this link and scroll down to tissue culture it explains it some.
http://www.mikesbackyardgarden...
Tissue culture is taking a tiny piece of plant and putting in a test tube, so to speak, and growing it. Then cutting it up some more and growing it then once it has leaves and roots growing them as seedlings until full grown. Some plants do great tissue cultured, some even do better than the mother plants. Daylilies on the other hand don't always do so well. It can bring out mutations and the bad underlying qualities it may have. Some actually do great and if evaluated properly you can have a great plant. But when mass produced and not evaluated for quality it can lead to having daylilies that have not quite the right color. lower bud count, performs poorly, etc.
Big box stores buy in quantity and for lowest price. The only way that, say for instance, every single Lowes can have all the daylilies that they sale is by buying from someone who mass produces. And IMHO the only way to do that is to tissue culture. Then you add in Walmart and Home Depot and even local nurseries that have these plus any other stores that may sell them. A lot of these places buy from the same suppliers so that's a lot of daylilies being bought and sold.
If you are just growing them in your garden then you may not have a problem with them being TC if they perform well. But then you have the people who buy the ones who don't do well and they may decide that daylilies aren't good plants and then they won't buy more and they tell there friends about it and maybe they won't buy any.
I have bought from these places and some do great, then I've had others that perform very poorly, didn't increase, never bloomed properly, and the blooms looked awful all the time and didn't look like it should (coloring).
I hope this answers your questions some.
