"X" makes me think of how we write the parentage of daylilies. When writing out the parents of a daylily the pod (female) parent is listed first followed by an "X" ( which stands for pollinated by) then the pollen parent (male). An example of this is the parentage of 'Wonder of it All' written as 'Mandalay Bay Music' X 'Wonders Never Cease' and read as 'Mandalay Bay Music' pollinated by 'Wonders Never Cease'.
Parentage involving seedlings, or sometimes more than two registered daylilies, are written with the two parents for each additional cross written in parenthesis. In the parentage of 'Julie Newmar' the parentage is written as (sdlg x 'Fortune's Dearest')X 'Gerda Brooker'. The pod parent is a seedling from the cross of sdlg X 'Fortune's Dearest'. This seedling was then pollinated by 'Gerda Brooker'.
A longer parentage may look like this when written out....
'Larry's Twilight Bite' from parents (( Sun Bear x Julie Newmar) x Sword Dancer) X Rosy Spiketail shows the parentage of the two seedlings involved in this cross. The first seedling with parentage of 'Sun Bear' X 'Julie Newmar'.
A second seedling ( Sun Bear x Julie Newmar) X 'Sword Dancer' that was then crossed with 'Rosy Spiketail'.
I can find no reference in daylilies for the use of an upper case "X" or lower case "x" when writing parentage, but somewhere over the years I had learned that an upper case "X" was used to indicate the final crossing involving the two direct parents. (Both upper and lower case are used in the ATP database - 'Asheville Skyline' uses a lower case "x" and 'Asheville White Winged Dove' a upper case "X" for the same cross of 'Destined to See' X 'Julie Newmar'. The upper/lower case writing does not apply in the ATP database either.)
This ended up taking a bit longer than I wanted
...I like reading parentage and got sidetracked...
X-mas in July!!!!
Nothing beats the "x"-citment of waking up during July and knowing there will be cultivars with FFO's and new seedling blooms to see.
