beckygardener said:Seriously, THANK YOU! Those are questions that I have had surfacing in my thoughts constantly as I am hand-pollinating blooms.
You are always very welcome :-)
I now know that daylily genetics are like a poker game. Any genes could wind up in any seedling or not.
Exactly
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?
It is not necessarily all trial and error or luck, but there is a considerable amount of trial and error. Perhaps a very large amount of trial and error.
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?
That is the major part in all hybridizing. In general, each crop of new seedlings typically, only at best, produces a small change. Only after many years of hybridizing for similar goals do the differences between the plants now and those many years ago become large and very obvious. Sometimes, there is what is called a sudden 'break' - a new characteristic appears more or less seemingly suddenly. An example might be the first partial golden/yellow petal edge. Another might be the first partial dark coloured petal edge, etc. The hybridizers then make as many crosses as they can using the new break with other daylilies to produce a seedling with slightly more coloured edge or a slightly wider coloured edge or one that appears more frequently, etc.
What happens if they don't? Start all over or change the hybridizing plan?
Most hybridizers probably use several different ideas for each of their hybridizing goals at the same time. If one idea does not work then they could concentrate on the other ideas. For example, when partial yellow/gold edges started to appear the hybridizers might have decided to try self-pollinating the gold-edged seedlings, or they might have tried sib-crosses, or crosses back to their parents or crosses with any other unrelated daylily with any sign of gold edges, or crosses specifically with near -whites or with light yellows, etc.
Or settle for something less or different?
Quite possibly, that may often happen.
How do they get from point A to point B in their daylily hybrids?
Usually through many small steps, some of which may not have had much, if any, obvious effect on the apparent current end-point or goal.
I would love to read about an example of how to create something specific using a real, named hybrid.
To do that and include all parts of all the steps, the hybridizer would have had to make records of all the crosses made and why the seedlings were discarded and why the crosses where made in a long sequence over many years of hybridizing for a specific goal. I'm not sure that would be easily possible for daylily hybridizers, but one could always reverse the process. Starting with a current daylily characteristic one could follow how it could be lost and one could produce a daylily that looked like a species plant.
