I'm trying to learn. I know that for many years the tall bearded iris were diploids. Now they are exclusively tetraploids. In daylilies I see that both dips and tets are still beings introduced. What are the features of each, positive or negative? Which do you favor and why?

I still like them both.

Can you tell the difference by looking at them. Is one type more vigorous than the other?

I have become interested in Sculpted Relief daylilies, if you set out 100 of them and asked me to guess the ploidy I would have a very good chance of being correct 100 percent of the time. Of course I looked in the database and only found 8 dips as being Sculpted Relief, of the ones with pictures really only one 'Traded To The Yankees' actually looked like a Relief bloom, and its pollen parent is unknown, so maybe just a mistake?
I looked up the definitions for the two in the AHS dictionary and saw the only real distinction they made was the number of chromosomes, so that to me indicates that it might be hard to look at the plants and tell just by looks.
Here is an interesting link just for fun.
http://icantbelieveitsadip.com...
Now I am not saying that a really experienced daylily person could not tell the difference at least in most daylilies by looking, but I would not be confident in my guesses. Others might.
Here is a thread from an older poster:
The thread "Tetraploid vs diploid daylilies" in Daylilies forum
I hope others will post what they have observed.

Thanks for the links Larry. I like both but am curious to see if most people have a preference.

I have absolutely no clue. I was hoping from the thread title that some useful info would be shared. Alas...

I like both. In some cases it is hard to tell. Here is a perfect example

This is a dip that has since been converted. The tetraploid substance is generally thicker. In an everyday garden the way to tell either or if you are not sure and the plant is fertile is to dab individual flower with separate dose of known dip and tet pollen. Larry thanks for those links. I will check them out later.

I'm a tet fan and don't like dips. For me dips typically have weak scapes and no substance to the flowers they produce. Tets have sturdy thick scapes more often than not and the flowers are thick and not almost see through like most dips. Tets also have more variability in their offspring vs dips. Dips tend to have wispy foliage where tets tend to have thicker fans. Of course there are tets with weak scapes and small fans but from my experience tets are better all the way around.

From the old dips that I have, it confirms that they are of less substance - thinner leaves, lighter petals. However, probably because people worked at hybridizing them for so long, there is an excellent variety of colors, eyezones etc. Excellent hybridizers like Gossard are producing new diploid intros every year.

I prefer tets, and particularly those with large, interesting, substantial blooms. The reason is, that I have several gardens distributed around my place, which are mostly viewed from a distance.

Mike so glad you posted that, and brought up the subject of conversions of dips to tets.
If dips and tets are often hard to distinguish, why do the conversions? I suppose just to be able to cross an admired plant with the dips (before conversion) and the tets(after conversion) giving a lot more possible results when crossing. But it does seem the crosses do often possess some different traits, such as a larger bloom, or difference in scape height and thickness.
Green throats seem to come out more in tets, and other traits seem to be passed along better also.
Edited to add:
Bigger and thicker are not always better, thick blooms do tend to break or crack easily. As mentioned in an earlier thread in certain forms flowing is considered more attractive that ridgid.

As far as conversions go the top nod has to go-to Rose F. Kennedy for all the amazing kids that she has helped produced. If this continues, I will have to guess that she will have the most registered offspring in time. Currently the database have her at 169. MHO of course. Shoot at me if there is currently something better out there in the conversion world. Substantial Evidence is on the rise.

Paul2032 said:Can you tell the difference by looking at them. Is one type more vigorous than the other?

If we grew a number of daylilies, say 100 red flowered daylilies we might guess which ones were diploid and which ones were tetraploid by differences in some characteristics, such as the thickness of the petals. Many times we would be correct but there would also be too many times when we would be incorrect. This caused problems decades ago, when diploids were being treated by hybridizers with colchicine to produce tetraploid versions and many were not using more reliable techniques to identify whether their attempts were successful. One of the characteristics that has some reliability is comparing the pollen size of the diploid version with the pollen size of the tetraploid version of the same cultivar. Simply comparing the pollen size of a daylily to a known size is not sufficiently reliable.

Since there are two separate breeding populations, diploids versus tetraploids, differences in most characteristics between the two populations will have depended and continue to depend on which diploid cultivars are used in conversions to tetraploids and how (for what characteristics) the hybridizers select daylilies to be parents in the two populations/ploidies.

When a diploid is converted to a tetraploid the major change is that the volume of the cells doubles or their linear dimensions change by about 35%. Other changes also occur, for example tetraploids are less fertile than diploids. Diploid and tetraploids may not have the same susceptibility to plant diseases.

tet RFK is a great conversion but hybridizers are using it to death and it's not so unique anymore. I don't own tet RFK but I am a fan just not as much now as I was last year and in 2017.

I can include some info with the tertra/diploid topic from the lilium world.

A lot of times the tertra will have slightly thicker leaves and stiffer in general. Generally taller and larger sized blooms.

The only fool proof way to tell is counting the chromosomes. But the reason people are moving to or working with is because the chromosome count is doubled. This opens a chance for new colors, patterns, styles etc.

Also, some plants get coverted to tetra to make it more fertile as the diploid might have been sterile.

I'll add also, some people that do work in plant breeding, are attempting to induce more polyplody and doubling the tetras, making hexaploid plants. Though from my understanding, the plants that have succesfully converted to Hexaploid have been too brittle or oddly enough bloom size had shrunk.

Thanks everyone....I'm learning...

Good stuff people, thanks! I have a dislike for scapes that lean and have also been transitioning to Tets. I'm interested in taller scapes and larger blooms for my hybridizing goals and I thought Tets would be the better way to go.

Here is a good explanation of dips vs tets by a member on Gardenweb (Houzz) It was posted a number of years ago but i found it very helpful in my understanding of the difference when I first started out.

"All species of daylilies are diploid. That means they have 22 chromosomes. They get 11 from the mother and 11 from the father plant when they are created. Generally speaking, dips have thinner substance to the flowers and thinner scapes and leaves. When tets were chemically induced, it stopped normal cell division and produced plants with twice the number of chromosomes. This would be fatal in animals, where a slight change often has fatal effects, but it happens in plants and they seem to sort things out. Tets have 44 chromosomes, 22 from each parent. Generally, they have thicker foliage and thicker scapes as well as more substance to the blooms. Early tets seemed to have more issues with scapes 'blasting'...they were so abnormally thick that they 'exploded', but much of that has been overcome in the years since.

Tets have some characteristics that are dependent on more genetic material to carry...teeth and fangs and heavier edges, for example. There are breeders, however that are working to give these characteristics to dips. Dips, have given us 'blue' eyes and fantastic patterns (check out Bob Faulkner's site). Many of the neat patterns and colors of dips can be 'borrowed' by tet hybridizers when they use colchicine or another chemical to turn a dip into a tet. These plants have their name preceded with a 'tetra' or 'tet' prefix. If you look up the daylily, Rose Kennedy, it is a dip, but there is now a tet conversion that makes those genetics available to cross with other tets.

You can create a triploid by crossing a tet with a dip. Usually the tet should be the pollen parent since dip pollen doesn't seem have the 'oomph' to fertilize a tet. The issue is that plant will be a dead end since it is a 'mule' with 33 chromosomes, which can't evenly split between egg and sperm. Usually they are sterile, but plants do have ways to overcome sterility by throwing some fertile eggs and pollen.
The diploid Ed Murray can be bred as a dip or a tet. It seems that it produces some unreduced gametes, which gives some tet pollen and eggs, but this is unusual. Most dips are bred with dips and most tets with tets. Dips do usually produce lots more seed.

I should add that neither dips nor tets are 'superior'. Dips, having fewer chromosomes, have allowed breeders to create characteristics that haven't shown up in tets and maybe never will, except for 'borrowing' it from the dips. Diploids are often more graceful than tets. As I stated above, tets can give us more petal substance and patterns that dips don't carry right now. Many gardeners grow both and enjoy both. You only need to worry about the genetics if you are going to hybridize. If you mix up your dips and tets, you'll be wasting a lot of time on plants that won't set seed for you. Otherwise, just enjoy the best of both worlds! Hope that helps. Bob

This post was edited by hoosierbob on Sun, Jan 18, 15 at 9:37"

Thanks Karen for posting....I'm contemplating making a FEW crosses next summer. Thanks to hoosierbob also.

Also the difference between dips and tets has more significance to a hybridizer than a home gardener who is just growing for fun or personal enjoyment. You probably have heard that it is easier to hybridize with dips than tets for desired daylily traits. This is true because each dip has only 2 sets of chromosomes (one from the pod and one from the pollen) while each tet cell has 4 sets of chromosomes for the same characteristic. Suppose you are working on to hybridize a daylily with a rare trait that is recessive. If the parents of the cross contain these recessive gene, then the probability of you getting an offspring that contains only recessive genes from both parent is 25% for a dip but only 2.7% for a tet. Thus it is much harder and require more work to get a desired trait to express on a tet daylily than a dip.





THese diagrams are taken from Daru Sharp's presentation on daylily genetics and how it plays in producing broken color, striping, and stippling daylilies.