beckygardener said:Is "red" the dominant color for ALL daylilies?
Formally, scientifically, no one has made the necessary crosses with daylilies to determine how any of the flower colours are inherited in diploid daylilies or in tetraploid daylilies. So we cannot formally (and with any great confidence) say whether "red" flower colour is dominant but if it is, then it is dominant for ALL daylilies (but see below for purple).
We also have the problem of the flower colour "purple".
In general and as a very over-simplified explanation, excluding purple, red is more or less dominant to the other colours.
In general and as a very over-simplified explanation, excluding red, purple is more or less dominant to the other colours.
If red flowered and purple flowered diploid daylilies are crossed with each other we
might find that red and purple are additive (or sometimes possibly described as co-dominant or possibly incompletely dominant).
However, there are more complications in daylilies in that crosses of red flowered daylilies with yellow flowered daylilies may produce seedlings that are not actually described as red flowered but may be described as "brown" or "muddy" or "drab", etc. The same may be true for crosses of purple flowered daylilies with yellow flowered daylilies.
Mendel's research was very exact and he used a species (the pea) that allowed relatively simple conclusions about inheritance. Unfortunately diploid daylilies are probably one of the worst species to use for genetics (especially in the home garden) because they are generally self-incompatible and tetraploid genetics are much more complicated than diploid genetics.
