PRINCESS SOFIA X VICTORIAN GARDEN TWILIGHT TIME
Thanks to Gerda Brooker for this image of an new teeth daylily seedling of hers. The cross is Princess Sofia x Victorian Garden Twilight Time. Very Nice Gerda!
A reader commented on Northern hybridizing, “I am a northern hybridizer in my infancy stages…but here is my perspective. I have brought up many top southern bred plants. Most hybridizers in this area won’t consider anything but a dormant and are sure my southern ones will die. I am a natural risk taker..as I have always done well by this credo…..I have had many cultivars go dormant and have lost only three plants in 3 years. ( I am aware of the 25 yr..devastating winter curse). I feel daylilies have an amazing adaptability factor..most being of mixed dormancy background. Even if you get three blooms on a cultivar and use the pollen, get seeds and seedlings, isn’t this better than never having tried at all?
I have several outstanding seedlings bloom this past summer and I used them all heavily. Even if these seedlings don’t survive ( -28 degrees and thankfully I mulch and we have good snow cover)…THEIR seedlings might. Throw in a host of other environmental risks..and it is a toss of the coin, whether any daylily will survive or not….( go figure on sink holes!). Anywho, I think you should try anything that will influence your breeding program in a direction that interests you. AND with all the cold weather inundating the south in the last 2 years… maybe dormancy is not such a long shot. I will tell you a peony trick that I would be doing for sure…if I were trying to get a hard dormant to do well. That bucket of ice on its’ crown each morning….may fool it a tad….I would be doing just that…. or Cold root seller storage??? think outside of the box… go for it!”
Thanks for your comments! I believe good hybridizers are risk takers as you describe yourself as. Many are always looking for that break that produces distinction. Back to Dave on Brother Charles Reckamp next on the Daylily Teeth Blog….
Mike
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