Friday, July 8, 2011

Variegated Hybridizing


I have had the first of my green seedlings out of my variegated Momma bloom. Three years ago I only had three daylilies so I used Stella pollen from a City bed, and an old orange cultivar on her. The first blooms looked just like Stella, which is exactly what I expected. The blooms on my variegated plant are also 2" yellows.

My mystery variegated plant does have a few characteristics I can see in the seedlings. She throws out a long leaf at the node where the buds grow. It looks like a crazy hoodie sometimes. They can be a couple feet long and are very distinctive.
The buds are also a dark mahogany color, that is being passed to the seedlings.
The bud leaf looks like a flag here.

It's a bad hair day for flowers?
Sorry my camera doesn't do close ups.
The dark buds on a seedling
The long bud leaf at the bud node on a seedling

My variegated Momma always produces proliferations , here is one on the seedlings.

Here is some more crazy hair on a seedling.

Every seedling seems to have some form of extended crazy leaf on the flower scape.

Check out the dark buds too.

Yep she has strong genetics for bad hair children.

Here is variegated Jackpot my new variegated daylily. I hope the single fans I bought produce a flower, but I may have to wait till next year to cross this with my variegated daylily.

This year I have already crossed the first of the green seedlings, and they seem to be setting pods nicely. I will set as many seeds as possible on the green prodigy with the bad hair, in the hope that I will see some variegation in the F2 generation.

I will also make some back crosses to Mom, Golden Zebra, and if luck is with me with my new variegated Jackpot plants.

Variegation is believed to be passed by the pod parent, but this is not proven for daylilies. I also have grown out some bad hair boys from the pollen parent that I will cross for the sake of testing if variegation can be passed by pollen. I get a kick out of my patch of what I call the bad boys. They are squeezed in between two other plants, unlike the girls who have a place of honor near momma. My outcasts make me smile whenever I pass them, maybe they will do me proud, and produce something unexpected.


2 comments:

  1. what is the name of this plant please?!

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  2. Hi - I Was wondering what ever happened with your variegated daylilies? I've been accumulating as many as possible in hopes of trying to hybridize and perhaps make a few more.....

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