Viewing post #985263 by DogsNDaylilies

kidfishing said:I have about 7500 dip seedlings that were planted this year in the garden or are growing in pots. First to see how many are there next spring and how many start blooming. Let's see, at one per every 16 ....
I will just wait and see.

Is that really all that survive? Eeesh! Is there a greater likelihood of survival if you're breeding mainly dormants in the north? (i.e. is the high mortality rate a possible consequence of evergreen genes being played out in colder climates where many evergreens don't do as well?) Is that rate for seed grown in regular soil? Will mine have a significantly better chance being in a raised garden bed with better soil? Oy....one out of 16 means I'll be lucky to have a small handful survive. I need to ask my honey to buy me a few acres of land some year....

Davi said:I'm seeing some pretty unusual things such as midrib cristation and ruffles on the BACK of petals, extreme pleats, toothy projections on petal surfaces.....weird, wacky things. One has to sort out if what you are seeing is just a weather related mutation or some hidden genotype that is trying to express itself. And stabilizing anything new so that it appears consistently takes many generations. But to me, that is what hybridizing means....moving daylilies forward to create things that do not now exist....not just crossing one pretty face with another pretty face to reinvent the wheel. And the possibilities are greater with tetraploids in a focused program. Of course, some of those "unpredictable" outcomes are not always pretty!!!

I think we had a thread about mid-summer that was dedicated to weird blooms...did you ever post in it? I'd love to see pictures of your "weird, wacky","not always pretty" blooms! One man's trash is another's treasure and you never know, you might find someone who is interested in the characteristics that are playing out in some of your seedlings...that generation might not be beautiful, but playing with the 'ugly' trait in a specific way might give rise to something really cool and really focused!