I'm going to jump right in with a theory that I have no particular basis for, just to see if there's anyone who can come up with something that has some deeper science behind it. I do that only because I have long experience of yuk-orange (YO) flowers, and I know your meaning - lots of yum-oranges around, but these are not them!. Most of my YO experience has been with second-generation snapdragons that re-seed, though. Bought and enjoyed as clear pink, deep purple, and even white - in their second blooming year, after having a random cross-pollination party on their own, suddenly the offspring are a sea of YO!
Warning: continuation of mostly wild, nearly off-topic speculation continues: Since wild snapdragons, like species daylilies, are either yellow or orange-y (YO) for the most part, some offspring really want to revert to that coloration when cross-pollinated with a mix of more "modern" colors! Yellow, red, orange ... this end of the color spectrum also represents daylily's deepest preference, and we only get our other colors through intense fool-eration of the daylily genetic stock. There might still be 20% YO color genes behind a nice pink, for example, and bred to a red that, say, has 30% YO genes, suddenly 1/4 or 1/2 of the offspring are YO
So, 1. different colors together tend to run brown-orangey. Purple pod and Yellow pollen parents can give some orangey-brown offspring. And, 2. more historical cultivars that are not so many generations away from species yellow and orange-red in their background, might be even more likely to throw YO when used as parents.
Okay ... that's my theory and I'm sticking to it until someone comes along who can set us straight!
Any chance the seedling's parents were different colors or included some much-older or species daylilies?
