Absolutely gorgeous! I already have strawberry candy, but love the rest. please check my list and let me know if I have anything you're interested in. I've been busy collecting seeds so not everything I have is posted right now. I have lots of perennials so if there's something specific you're looking for let me know - I may have it. Or if you're looking for something for a particular area (butterfly plants, wildflowers, shade, tall perennials,etc) I might just have something that'll fit.

I was afraid that heat was causing my problems. Most of my plants are in the shade atleast 6 hours of the day after the first of June. The ones that I use the most are in light dappled shade more than that. I know I lose bud quantity by not being in more sun but since I'm fighting the heat, I figured the shade from my big old oaks would help. This year our weather was really freaky. It was so cool in April and the first of May that I didn't start having blooms until the last week of May. I usually have some the first week in May and by the second week, I'm getting around 100 blooms a day. So, the blooms were late and then, Blammm!! It goes from 40 at night to 95 in the day and the lows only in the 70s. I dare not even try to explain how high the humidity was. Next year, I'm going to be up before dawn putting on pollen. I hate getting up early, but I hate worse working 4 hours everyday for nothing. No, I don't freeze my pollen. I leave it in the vials, in my cool home until I get ready to use it. I don't know the science behind pollen, so I hope pollen doesn't "die" for the lack of a better word??? I did freeze some the first year, but it would sweat in the vials before I could use it and this just didn't work for me. My blooms usually don't have fluffy pollen until around 10am. The ones in the early morning sun fluff up first and then the ones in the shade will be ready to gather by the time I finish gathering the ones in the sun. It's amazing, the little bitty bees can sniff out dry pollen the second it gets ready and they are gone with it before I can get to it!! I use the little light weight hair nets to keep the bees off if they really get to greedy. I sure appreciate the feed back. I thought maybe you had a magic potion to hold the pollen to the pistol or something when you said you were getting such high success. I even wondered if some were wetting the pistol since I see so many photos made with water showing on the petals. Ya'll made me feel some better. Now, I'm going to work on getting my plants in good shape for next year. I need to repot about 300 pots and it will probably take atleast 600 pots to put them into. Sooo I have a lot of potting to do. Any recommendations on good fertilize. I'm using Mircle Grow garden soil in my pots and topping them off with mini pine bark mulch and using MG slow release fertilze. It gets expensive to repot this way, but when you think about paying $50 for one fan, using $3 worth of soil to put it in, isn't outrageous. I just haven't been able to pay $250 for one fan. I'd have to sleep with it to make sure the ______!!! voles didn't eat it. While I'm asking, what's your favorite parents this year? I'm going to purchase about 10 plants later this year, and I'm wanting to get the best pod builders I can. One more question: When the bud count is listed in the description, does this mean the total buds on all scapes for the year?? I have never seen a scape with 50 buds on it. I do good to get 15, most of mine is 8 to 10. I do have some that say they should have 35 - 40. Have a great day, Mona

lisa_3: I had the same issue come up last year with Substantial Evidence (this year was too crazy hot during bloom season for it to set seed)--about 1/2 of the seeds had germinated in the pod. I planted the sprouted seeds immediately and they proved to be viable and grew all winter long before being planted this past spring. The remaining, ungerminated seed got thrown into a baggie with plain water (no H2O2) in the fridge for three weeks and then planted, still ungerminated. Most of those also sprouted and grew. I'm thinking the pod germinating is just another quirky thing about Substantial Evidence and its offspring, although I haven't yet grown out seed from any other members in the line off of my own plants. I have bought seeds out of Pigment of the Imagination, but those behaved like any other seeds--come to think of it, the pod parent was a Faulkner seedling rather than POTI.

From a genetic viewpoint to distinguish whether the pod parent contributes more to a characteristic than the pollen parent requires that reciprocal crosses are made (A X B and B X A) and a large number of offspring are grown (in a randomized layout) and measurements taken and analyzed. A significant difference between the two F1s, AB versus BA, indicates (usually) a maternal effect. In most species chloroplasts (that make plant food) and mitochondria (that metabolize the food to provide energy) come from the pod parent only (but not all species, in some species the pollen parent contributes these solely or in others both parents contribute them). And both chloroplasts (and other plastids) and mitochondria have their own genes (DNA). They both reproduce just like plant cells. So both can have genetic variability and can differ between plants. That is one way offspring can have different characteristics that depend on the pod parent - because different pod parents may have different chloroplasts or mitochondria. Another way that offspring can differ based on the pod parent is due to the large contribution made by the pod parent to the seed. The seed affects the growth and characteristics of the offspring. In particular, the environment that the pod parent experiences can affect the characteristics the seedlings show. And such effects can last at least several generations. In some species these environmental effects may also influence the pollen and thus there can be a paternal difference present in the offspring. In practice most daylily hybridizers have found few if any reciprocal differences and typically are not concerned about which direction a cross is made other than with regard to pod and pollen fertility.