Ok, to an expert this will be a dumb question, so sorry in advance.
But, when crossing 2 daylilies how do you know the resultant seeds came from your cross versus, say, a bee or fly got there before you and fertilized the flower already? Especially with EMO daylilies, do you get up in the middle of the night to get there before the bees do?
Or are all your crosses done indoors, in a controlled environment? Or do you put a protective bag over the flower bud and only remove it once it has bloomed when you get there with your pollen, so you get there before the bees?
Or do you just hope for the best? I know one pollen particle can make one seed so, theoretically a pod of many seeds can contain crosses from multiple daylilies at the same time (including from self). So, perhaps the bee would not make all the seeds and you get to make some when you come by with your own harvested pollen?
Are there tips and tricks?

I hope for the best...looking at seedlings, sometimes you got to wonder I don't see many bees but there are other critters.

There are not that many bees in my garden either. Though I find that bees are not interested in Daylilies before 10 AM because the pollen sacs of most of my Daylilies are not fully open until 9am or after. I guess that's why some hybridizers save the pollen from previous day's blooms so they can apply the pollen early in the morning.

You can never be certain that the seeds from the daylily flower that you hand pollinated are from your cross. Sometimes they certainly will be from your cross. Sometimes they certainly won't be all from your cross. Sometimes none of them might be from your cross. It all depends

It depends partly on the pod parent. For example, 'Stella de Oro' sets many pods without a gardener making any pollinations. It does that naturally and successfully because it attracts different insects including some bees. Those insects sometimes naturally cross-pollinate it with pollen from other daylilies and sometimes they may self-pollinate it with some pollen from Stella flowers.

Some pod parents do not attract many insects. In those cases you can be more certain that any pods that develop and any seeds that germinate are more likely to have been because they were hand-pollinated.

It is possible to make it less likely that a flower is pollinated naturally. You can pollinate it before it opens normally and then when it does open you can remove the stamens, petals and sepals. Removing the petals and sepals will make it less attractive to insects so they will be less likely to visit the flower. Removing the stamens (especially before the anthers open and the pollen dries and becomes fluffy) means that even if an insect does visit the flower it will be less likely to self-pollinate the flower.

Or you can do what professional plant breeders do. They force open the flower bud before it opens on its own. They remove the stamens. They pollinate the flower with the desired pollen and then they place a "bag" around the flower so that no insects can get in.

Having grown daylilies all my life, many daylily cultivars grown in my gardens have never set a bee pod on their own. In fact, most never set a bee pod. A small number of different ones easily set pods (bee pods) every year like 'Stella de Oro'. Still the gardener can pollinate blooms before natural pollinators.

This being the case, the probability of my pollination resulting is the pod is very high. The result is assumed to be the cross made by me and seedlings are always evaluated for quality and uniqueness anyhow. If the probability were not very high that the pod is a result of the gardeners pollination, daylily seeds would not be so readily sold and accepted by buyers/growers as the cross listed.

The most recent research identified that approximately 16% of the daylily seedlings from a number of different crosses were not from the pollen parent that was used. Previous research had suggested that the proportion was about 5%.

Interesting information, as always Maurice!

Fortunately, we can feel confident about the pod parent.

And we are not breeding show dogs or race horses.

@Maurice: that is truly fascinating. How was this performed? Whole-genome sequencing? Or specific PCR of known markers? Or some other mecahnism? 16% mis-identification is not too bad at all!
Do you have a citation? I would be fascinated to read it. One thing that is cool about the daylily community is the touching upon genetics. Indeed, Gossard has his own flow-cytometer nowadays and can count the ploidy of various cultivars just to identify whether something is diploid, tetraploid, pentaploid, hexaploid, or even haploid. Or something in-between. Genetics is fun.

@plasko20 Nothing as complicated as whole genome sequencing. The researchers were interested in creating triploid cultivars. Crosses were made between diploids and tetraploids and vice versa. The ploidy of the seedlings was checked. Seedlings that were diploid from diploid pod parents or that were tetraploid from tetraploid pod parents indicated that the pollen parent was not that used by the hybridizer. The simplest explanation is that they were self-pollinations.

Development of triploid daylily (Hemerocallis) germplasm by embryo rescue
Zhiwu Li, Linda Pinkham, N. Faith Campbell, Ana Carolina Espinosa, & Rumen Conev
Euphytica volume 169, pages 313–318 (2009)

https://www.researchgate.net/p...

Kidfishing, I get crazy numbers of bee pods. But I also have crazy numbers of bees, all kinds, from little tiny ones to great fluffy bumbles. I only use organic in my yard, I don't spray any chemicals and have watched the yard develop it's own predator/ prey balance when it came to insects. Nothing gets too out of control as something always arrives to eat it. I've always just picked the seed pods off the plants as I wanted the energy in the plant I paid for. But this year I've sprouted a bunch of them and next year, intend to do some intentional crosses. I don't know if it will be all me or 16% bee but, whatever. For my purposes, it doesn't really matter. There will be many good flowers to choose from.

@admmad Was there ever any followup [as indicated in the article] on the triploid seedlings?

@SunriseSide Two of the triploid seedlings were registered with the AHS.

VT Purple Passion (Pinkham-Li-Conev, 2014) height 40 in.(102 cm), bloom 6.62 in.(17 cm), season EM, Semi-Evergreen,, 24 buds, 4 branches, Deep purple with tiny white edge, yellow throat, velvety texture, confirmed sterile triploid. (Dakar × Black Ice)

VT Spirit (Pinkham-Li-Conev, 2010)
height 23 in.(58 cm), bloom 5.5 in.(14 cm), season E, Rebloom, Semi-Evergreen,, 15 buds, 3 branches, Burnt orange with maroon eye and ruffled maroon edge above orange throat tests show it to be triploid. (Pumpkin Prince × Pumpkin Kid)

Most of the triploid seedlings were discarded. I managed to get two (or it might have been three) and those were the only ones still being grown. They might have included the two that were registered (I would need to check my field maps for their names).

No other research on triploid daylilies has been published by the research group and as far as I know the daylily hybridizer who was involved with the research has not produced or registered any other triploid daylilies.

We talked a little about those triploid daylilies a little while back on the thread about ploidies https://garden.org/thread/go/1...

I remember reading somewhere why Triploid was not included in the search options on ADS, but can't remember why it was. I pulled the two triploids mentioned up by name in the search. I Also thought that Flore Pleno was a triploid, but the info from the search did not say what it was. Anyone know why Diploid and Tetraploid are the only two choices? Is Flore Pleno a triploid?

Seedfork said:Anyone know why Diploid and Tetraploid are the only two choices? Is Flore Pleno a triploid?

'Flore Pleno' is triploid, as are 'Kwanso' and 'Europa' for example. I don't know why triploid was not included in the database, the only thing I can think of is that at the time it was created the only triploid daylilies were considered species, and species do not technically come under the "jurisdiction" of AHS. But there could be disagreement on this since some authors write, for example, Hemerocallis fulva var. kwanso (which is a species name that would not come under AHS) while others write the name for the same plant Hemerocallis fulva 'Kwanso' which is a cultivar name that would come under AHS.

@Zoia, I also get a ton of bees of many types (we are in a similar geography). Last year, due to pandemic I was spending more time in the yard and even noticed we had metallic-green bees (horribly called "sweat bees" as they are apparently attracted to the scent of sweat so they say)! Those bees are awesome and cute. Also, I saw bright red lily beetles on my lilies. I do hope they do not go for daylilies aswell. And the weird ladybug stage where it looks like a spiky monster. So many new creatures to me all thanks to enjoying time in the lockdown garden.

plasko20 said:Also, I saw bright red lily beetles on my lilies. I do hope they do not go for daylilies as well.

No red lily beetles don't bother daylilies (which are not really lilies) fortunately.

Yep, thank goodness for that, those lily beetles are a horrible pest. I go around when the leaves are coming out on the lilies and knock the eggs under the leaves into a jar of soapy water. Or the beetles themselves, if I can find them. I don't have that many real lilies, primarily because of that voracious imported pest beetle.

They will decimate your true lilies, though, if they are not controlled.