Maurice - I bow at your feet!
Seriously, THANK YOU! Those are questions that I have had surfacing in my thoughts constantly as I am hand-pollinating blooms.
I now know that daylily genetics are like a poker game. Any genes could wind up in any seedling or not. So .... this is what is really throwing me for a loop ... how do well-known hybridizers know how to create what they want in a bloom/plant? Is it just the luck of trial and error or do they have a true plan? I do realize that hybridizers plant thousands of seedlings observing and waiting for particular traits. Almost all are culled before or after blooming if they don't have those specific traits. So is it just a matter of crossing desirable traits, growing out hundreds/thousands of seedlings and waiting patiently for those desired traits to show up? What happens if they don't? Start all over or change the hybridizing plan? Or settle for something less or different? I am baffled by this. How do they get from point A to point B in their daylily hybrids?
I would love to read about an example of how something specific was created using a real, named hybrid as the final results.
