I have been interested in genetics since the mid-70s. Although I began with equine genetics (which I still study), I began hybridizing roses in the '80s and daylilies in the '90s. I have been privileged to learn from a number of outstanding breeders over the years. I accidentally stumbled onto modern tetraploid daylilies in 1991 when I lived in Gainesville, FL and someone asked me if I had ever seen this garden there that was really beautiful. That is how I found Wimberley Way and Bill Munson and became hooked on daylilies after one hour in that garden. I am so sad that this beautiful garden no longer exists. Bill was not only one of the pioneers of the modern tetraploid daylily, he was also an avid gardener and his garden included species of plants brought in from all over the world. The garden was designed and planted to show color all year. It was a great way to see how hundreds of thousands of daylilies enhanced a large informal garden. He used strategically planted trees instead of shadecloth for his hybridizing. His daylily beds were edged in a special variety of liriope and were just part of the natural landscape. In a walk through Bill's garden, you would never know you were in the middle of a working plant nursery. This is something I am trying to achieve in my own garden which I guess is like many gardens, a work in progress.

Bill taught me a great many things about hybridizing daylilies during the hundreds of hours I spent in that garden. To this day I still stand by most of his tenets regarding hybridizing daylilies. He was not a believer in cosseting his lilies and was very Darwinian in his outlook on their survival. If a seedling could not shine in his garden with minimal amounts of fertilizer, a far amount of sun, and lots and lots of water, it wasn't worthy of selection. To him, the long term popularity of daylilies relied on their being easy to grow and care for. I try to keep this in mind when I'm planning crosses, selecting new lilies, marking keepers, etc.

He and some of his contemporaries did more "line breeding" (geneticists outside the daylily world would call it "inbreeding") than I care for. If we've learned anything in the last 5,000 years, it is that in the long run, too much inbreeding is detrimental to most species, be they plant or animal. There is a reason you can't marry your close kin by law. Some people claim that inbreeding allows you to double up on good genetic traits, but I would point out that at the same time it doubles up on bad ones as well as halving the available gene pool that an outcross would provide. When your gene pool gets too small, you will start seeing weaker, less vigorous plants and less bloom as well as sterility and taken to extreme, ends in extinction of either that line or that species. So I rarely inbreed within the first three generations and prefer a four-generation outcross. Therefore, I am always on the lookout for new genes to add to my garden. I don't do conversions myself for several reasons but primarily because I am not very familiar with most diploids on ther market and grow none myself. Lack of time and space dictates this decision. Instead, I have taken Jack Carpenter's advice and just purchased the best offspring of successful conversions that are introduced. Most conversions are not easy to work with and I save myself lots of time and aggravation by following his advice.

For various reasons, some people do not plan or keep records of their crosses. It is a necessary evil for a number of reasons and I am disturbed by the number of registrations where the parentage is unknown or is listed as "seedling X seedling", the hallmarks of no or sloppy record keeping. True, we all have lost tags on occasion. That is unavoidable. But so is the fact that many amateur and some quasi-professional hybridizers are either too lazy, or too obtuse to keep the necessary records or just have no aptitude for detail. Some argue that they don't have the time. If not, then they don't really have time for this hobby or they need to scale back their efforts so that they do have time to consider their goals and plan how they can achieve them. Without good records, you cannot possibly move your program forward. One of the best ways to determine which lilies should be added to your program is through studying parentage of newer daylilies that you like to not only see what has been a productive parent for other hybridizers (95% of registered daylilies are produced from less than 5% of registered daylilies!) but also trends in what those successful lilies are producing.  Most daylilies are not good parents. They tend to reproduce themselves or lilies of lesser quality than themselves. To be an asset to a hybridizer's program, a lily must be capable of producing offspring better than itself. If you don't keep detailed, accurate records, how will you know what is producing offspring that will help you move your program along in a positive direction? Finding viable parents to use in your program is not nearly as easy as one would think. I have rejected many, many cultivars for purchase due to lack of stated parentage and will continue to do so. I have occasionally made an exception but only in the case of a truly exceptional lily with a specific quality or trait I wish to incorporate into my program.

A serious hybridizer plans his/her crosses in advance. Crosses should not be made based solely on appearance! Unless you are very familiar with all parentages in all of your daylilies, as well as strengths and weakness (Bob Carr was most adamant about not using any daylily in his program with more than one flaw!), you won't be making very many viable crosses. I find that winter, when you are stuck inside and suffering from daylily withdrawal, is a good time to plan your crosses for the coming season. I review my planned crosses again in the spring after all my new plants have been received but before first bloom, to reconfirm my plans and make any necessary adjustments. If you are doing just a few crosses for fun, you may have the luxury of planning your crosses the day before you plan to make them. But, for me, this isn't possible as I do several hundred crosses a day during peak bloom season. 

Successful hybridizers will tell you that you must be ruthless in what daylilies you use to achieve your goals in hybridizing. Last year I asked Pat Stamile how he got so many EMOs...did he specifically breed for them? He said yes, he did breed for them and he used no lily that was not an EMO in his program and that he was absolutely ruthless about it. All of his resulting seedlings are not necessarily EMOs (although obviously a great many are) and although the non-EMOs may eventually be registered, they do not become a part of his hybridizing program. You must decide what traits you want your seedlings to exhibit...do you hate short scapes, lilies that tend to bloom down in the foliage, do you want dormants, rebloom, what form, edges, bud counts, size, color, etc. You need to set your goals and your standards for those goals. Just walking out to your garden with pollen in hand and crossing a pretty face with a pretty face is not likely to produce many keepers for you. You may get lucky occasionally but mostly you won't produce anything worthy of introduction. Top end hybridizers like Munson, Moldovan, Stamile, Carr were all ruthless about the selection of daylilies used in their programs and if you are serious about hybridizing, you will need to be as well.

One of the reasons I asked Pat about EMOs is that as a hybridizer, I love them! Pods take best when it is relatively cool...i.e. mornings. EMOs are usually ready to go first thing in the morning when you are. If the stigma is still dry when you are ready to dab, just dab it with the stigmatic fluid (which is essentially sugar & water) from another pistil (doesn't even necessarily have to be a daylily!) broken off another bloom. Some folks even take the pistils from spent blooms from the day before and use them. Just about any pistil is OK as long as it hasn't been dabbed with pollen previously. The stigmatic fluid feeds the pollen DNA through the style (the filament between the stigma and the ovary) to the ovary which contains the ovules that when pollinated become seed.

While we are on the subject of pod take, please note that high nitrogen fertilizer inhibits the production of inole-3 ascetic acid, a plant hormone necessary for pod and seed production. For plants you want to use in your hybridizing program, use a 13-13-13 (or thereabouts) fertilizer in the spring. After pod harvest you can return to the 3-1-2 ratio fertilizer for your fall fertilization.

Nothing like heat and direct sun to make pods drop like hot bricks...Gary Colby's phrase, not mine, but I couldn't express the phenomenon better. Shadecloth will help quite a bit but you will still lose some pods to the heat of summer. There is no other solution for this that I know of so I am very partial to early and extra early season bloomers in my garden. I also try to get my southern orders in 3 months before peak bloom. This not only allows them to get established well enough to support pod take without harming the plant, but they will still bloom on Florida (or wherever they came in from) time which can be a month to six weeks earlier than my normal bloom season while it is still nice and cool and great weather for setting pods. Mild frosts in late March & early April don't seem to bother the new arrivals very much at all. If you wanted to try this method you will need to adjust your time table to your weather and normal bloom season. I try to get northern orders in during the fall. By the time northern plants are ready to bloom when received in the spring, it is too hot here to get decent pod take. I usually stop pollinating blooms after the 4th of July.

Hopefully I will add to this article from season to season as I continue to not only learn from others but also from my own experiences.

Have a great bloom season!

Barb Allen

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