dellac said:One was meant to be Yellow Bunting and the other Golden Gleam:
That's the thing with all these forms when we get seed for them, and grow them on; it is so very important that the crosses to produce said seed are protected! Very often, unknowing and well meaning seed collectors assume that an open pollinated flower of one of these forms will produce the same seed, when in fact, it most likely will
not.
L. pumilum Yellow Bunting and Golden Gleam, L. amabile luteum, L. martagon var. album, L. regale album, the list goes on and on (and not just in Lilium). These are all forms (the botanical designation:
forma) in my opinion, not varieties or cultivars. Although often rare or very rare, the genes are likely hidden among most wild populations. They have a possible probability to pop up now and then, with the random right parental crossing. This is not to say that a white form of something that originates in one population is identical to another in another population, even though they look the same. There would always be the underlying genetic base of the unique population that would make each of them different. (With Lilium, this is a very good thing because there would be no self-infertility problem if these different white forms were crossed.)
But, the following is a pretty sure bet:
For instance, in Della's case of the "Yellow Bunting" that was orange, the yellow gene(s) in the seed lot is present in all the seeds (and thus seedlings), even though the trait is not outwardly shone. Thus, controlled crossing of these seedlings ought to produce a proportion of yellow flowering plants. If these yellow flowering plants were again hand pollinated and protected, the the progeny would have a much higher percentage of yellow flowering plants, if not 100%.
