LOL at your
ugly seedlings, Char!
(Yes, I have them too, but mine are not nearly as interesting as yours!)
My term for today is
unexpected. With respect to hybridizing, the
unexpected is the seedling that turns out nothing like what you expected from the cross (which, yes, can include the
ugly).
The
unexpected can happen many ways. One example would be a double seedling resulting from single parents.
For example, {'Forever Red' x 'Temptation's Kiss'} x 'Best in Class'
{
x
} x
produced 'Doubly Hot'
Another example would be a daylily which blooms singly on the first scapes, but doubling (or at least consistently producing petaloids) on the rebloom scapes. 'But Wait There's More' (I love that name!) is one such daylily, also a child of single parents.
'Coral Majority' as a single bloom
presumably on rebloom, showing petaloids
It is not only hybridizers who may encounter the
unexpected. I grow neither of the above daylilies (though I got 'Doubly Hot' recently, it has yet to bloom here), but last season, for the first time ever, I saw petaloids on 'Winning Note'.
in my garden:
One seedling which I would guess was very
unexpected by the hybridizer is now a registered cultivar,
'Undefinable'
