Actually ORANGE VELVET is listed as a parent of 17 registered cultivars on the AHS Data Base. Some of the crosses involve Orange Velvet as a parent, but a few of them list TET. Orange Velvet. So some are using the original diploid version and some have used the converted Tetraploid as a parent. That is my best guess!

Holy cow! I had no idea one could "convert" the ploidy. How and why? Just to allow for more possible crosses in a breeding program? And that brings me back to "how"? Can a backyard gardener convert a plant from DIP to TET?

Thanks for the info

Alexa

Yes Diploids can and are converted to Tetraploids. I don't believe there are any natural occuring Tetraploids, just Diploids and Triploids. Google "Daylilys reduced gametes" and you will probably get more information than you want.

The conversion process involves the use of some pretty hazardous chemicals and can be dangerous, if you "google" daylily conversion, you will find a bunch of information.

Yes there are Diploids that can accept Tetraploid pollen and the resulting seedlings if the pollination is good they will be tets. The Triploid H. fulva Europa (ditch lily) will also accept tet pollen and the seedlings should be Tets, but I'll warn you up front I did thousands of crosses, which resulted in small pods in almost every pollination, but most abort. For my efforts over the course of 2 years I got about 20 seeds. Why bother doing it? I can't think of a more vigorous daylily and by using modern hybrids I feel like I am shuffling the genetic deck of cards again.

I have a bunch of new H. fulva Korea seedlings that should be tets getting ready to flower now. I am sure there will be nothing special, but I'll use them as bridge plants. I'll share some photos as they flower.

Bambi, I am curious about a few of the things you said, because they do not match what I thought I knew about genetics and ploidy.

You said that if a diploid is fertilized successfully by tetraploid pollen, the result will be a tetraploid. If I am correct that daylilies have 11 chromosomes in each set, then a diploid plant receives 11 chromosomes from its pod parent and 11 from its pollen parent, for a total of 22 chromosomes. A tetraploid daylily receives 22 (2 sets of 11) from each parent, for a total of 44. So a daylily that has one diploid parent and one tetraploid parent would have 33 chromosomes, and be triploid, right?

I think it is cool that you are doing some crosses back to the ditch lily and whatever H. fulva Korea is (I'm not familiar with that one). I know some people seem to assume that the original hybridizers selected all the "good" genes and there is no point in going back to the original species, but I'm sure that is not the case. You must be excited to see the results.
Casey

This work has also been done by some other people. Gil Skelter in Ontario Canada, and Joe Halinar In Oregon are 2 of them.

Keep an open mind, I was told that I couldn't cross Tets with the Ditchlily, but a couple of people told me it works but not very well. I am not kidding when I said I did thousands of crosses over the course of 2 years to get about 20 seeds I think the number was 23, and I have 21 seedlings, I would have to check. I pollinated every bloom on a very large clump for 2 years many pods begin forming and more than 99% abort. I am not sure it was worth it yet, we'll find out in a few more years when the F2 seedlings bloom.

The Korean fulva was broght back by Darrell Apps, Joe Halinar found out that is was very fertile. It will cross with Diploids readily and you get a fair number of seeds in each pod. If you use Tet pollen you get pods with only a few seeds. It's a great plant. I have a few seedlings that have NOTIFY GROUND CREW as a pollen parent the scapes are probably going to hit 5 feet, each seedling has 3 to 5 fans and they are only a year old. These are also big thick scapes. I did get a recticle and I'll be measuring and photographing pollen from those seedlings this year. A friend also gave me a microscope that will accept the body of my old Pentax K1000 so it should be easy. Now all I need is some slide film.

Google "reduced gametes in daylilys"!

I don't like a lot of the plants I am seeing. I have purchased a number of pretty faces that do not preform well and are ankle biters. I don't like short plants with big flowers. I love the flower LARRY GRACE has but it is short. Then there are the plants that don't increase well. ALmost all of the species do. The seedlings I'm seeing now are vigorous with good foliage, heavy scapes. What I don't like is that they have the typical fulva Y top branching and low bud counts but I'll work to improve that with newer plants with high budcounts and other good traits.

I have used mostly eyed flowers and UF's as pollen parents with the Korean fulva. None of the fulva Europa pods were labeled because of the sheer numbers of crosses and the high failure rate but I kept with the same program and used mostly eyed flowers and UF's.

I have also done a lot of Diploid crosses with citrina, altissima, and hakuuensis. There should be a lot of them blooming this year.

This is super interesting! Thanks so much for all the info you are providing. I am going to need to do some more research so I can ask intelligent questions because I am such a noob when it comes to DLs and plant genetics.

Bambi - I would love to see some of your seedlings now, before they have bloomed, so I can visually compare with some of what is in my garden.

Thanks again for the very informative responses!

Alexa

I am planning on taking some photos of some of the scapes today, especially one of a cut fulva scape next to a seedling scape.

There is another thing to keep in mind when you look at the databases, conversions are not listed as such so a plant like LAVENDER BLUE BABY which has 120 registered kids shows a mix of Dips & Tets it has had a part in producing. There have also in the past been mistakes made in the registrations.

There is another process to convert dips to tets that has not been addressed yet; that of radicle conversion. In the early days of converting dips to tets, one bathed sprouting seeds in a colchicine solution. The seeds that were converted to tets were from dip parents, but were tetraploid. Some plants were listed as induced tets, but I don't think there was a standard term used to indicate this process. Most of the early tets were produced from this method.
Ed

Ed,
Becky and I killed thousands of seeds trying to do that. We followed the directions, and even tried to use less Surflan. I didn't get a single seed to convert and I don't think she did either. The only conversions I was able to get to work was INDIAN GIVER & KIDNLY LIGHT using DSMO and Moth Balls (crystals actually). I may try a few more this summer when and if the ones I did last year are still stable. I did 4 double fans of each and killed half of them.

Holy mole! I haven't seen DMSO referenced in 20+ years and that was back in the days when I was working with TBs on the racetrack. Dont tell me gardeners were using it too?

This is getting crazier and more interesting by the minute

Alexa

I don't doubt you killed most of the seeds. I think the success rate was less than 1% using colchicine back in the days of Virginia Peck, but that's what they did.

DMSO is still widely used today Alexa, you just can't go down to the hardware store and buy it any more.

In the Daylily world, it is used for BAP treatments for increase and colchicine conversion treatments.
Ed

Really fascinating stuff. Thanks for sharing all of this! And thanks especially for the tip about researching unreduced gametes. That answered my confusion.
Casey

Ed is right about the DMSO, but I went to the feed store near here and they had pints and quarts. I would never had known since it's not right out on the shelves, but there was a bottle on the counter someone was coming back for. I don't think they just sell it to anyone that wants it I had to assure them I wasn't going to use it on myself, but they understood (well kinda) what I was going to do. I think the owner tried it on some Irises after I explained it to him. I have also been going there for a very long time and they know what I am up to.

Make no mistakes either even the conversion method using DSMO and mothballs is dangerous even if it is less dangerous than using colchicine. I mixed it in small amounts and used all of it.

I followed Jamies directions to the letter on the seed conversion trys and to be anymore accurate I'd had to have Jamie in the basement doing it for me. It was basically a waste of time. I also tried it with the DSMO and mothballs with the same results, dead seed.

Now about the X-rayed seeds, I had a bunch exposed to x-rays and they looked all gnarlly when they sprouted but look pretty normal now. No they don't glow in the dark (that would be cool). I was going to try the microwave but I thought it would be too harsh. I have a friend that is an x-ray tech and he was able to expose them for me. The germination rate was about normal. Now I wait 2 to 3 years to see if I get anything interesting.

The biggest limitation of seed conversion is that you are converting unknown seedlings. The big majority of the converted seeds turned out to be barkers, so it's a pretty futile effort compared to the crown treatment method. I'm surprised Jamie would even have a procedure for it. Must have gotten it from the Kirchhoff's. Same applies to flower and scape conversion methods. If you're going through all the time and effort, you would like something permanent to show for it. Bill Waldrop is open about how he does his conversions and shows lots of good information on his blog for those interested.

I think micro-waves would just cook the seeds, not really cause mutations. You could try irradiating the seeds with some kind of radiation, but the time and energy to see what you would get is a little too time consuming and Frankenstein for me. It's too much fun to straight hybridize and the variations, I think, are just as bountiful.
Ed

H. fulva Korean x LAVENDER ARROWHEAD sdlg.

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This is the first one, not real exciting but on a 50 inch scape. It got BALI WATERCOLOR pollen.

Nice looking seedlings there, Bambi Too.

It will be at least a couple more years before I see what my ditch lily seedlings turn out like. I used 'Red Suspenders' pollen on every open flower of a large clump of 'Europa' for 3 separate days.

Like Bambi Too I saw almost every flower start a pod but abort. Only two pods matured to produce 7 seeds. Of those only 2 germinated. I suspect that there was one viable seed per pod but don't know for sure because I mixed the seeds.

So far they seem more vigorous than my other first year seedlings. They have also been more tolerant of fluctuations in my watering.

I'm hoping to add height & drought tolerance to my tet lines through these.

It makes you appreciate Stout's patience as he used 'Europa' extensively with diploid crosses. I understand that it takes even more crosses to produce a few seeds when using diploid pollen with it.

One limitation for me is that 'Europa' blooms so early that I don't have a lot of choice plants available as pollen parents. Due to the obvious fertility issues I feel that using fresh pollen is the best course over frozen.

Debra

I think the Korean fulva is a Diploid but LAVENDER ARROWHEAD is a TET. I think I have some Korean X RED SUSPENDERS seedlings sending up scapes now.

Yes using Diploid seed on fulva Europa is extremely painful. I hit almost every bollm with Diploid pollen and got ZERO 0 ZIP, not a single seed. It was not worth the effort.

Frozen pollen works fine, I had an extensive collection but when the fridge broke down a few weeks ago it was sacrificed to save food. I was only able to keep a small ziploc bag full as opposed the really big ziploc full. I will admit though that fresh pollen is easier to use.

What is really amazing is the demand for Stout's plants back in the day, I have a pretty rare daylily book (only 1000 copies were printed) that says they needed a minimum of 3,000 plants before they could release them to the public.

I am pleased with that seedling despite it is a step backwards in the branching and budcount department, it is vigorous there are 5 fans already. I saved the pollen and the real test will be to see if it works on Tets. I still have less than 10 varieties blooming, I think we are about a week behind this year.

There are 9 more Korean fulva seedlings with scapes and I think I'll be seeing a few more.

Hey Debra,
You should check out Judy Ann's dip with a gold edge over on Tinker's in the Seedlings Forum.
Ed

I just want to say thanks again for continuing to share all this interesting stuff. I don't really have anything to add, but I am very much enjoying reading.
Casey