The farther I go down the daylily propagation path, the more curious I get. That is how scope creeps, but also how experience grows. It is a balance. I am finding my parameters.
As I have shared, daylily self-seed harvesting, planting, and growing to bloom is really appealing to me. I worked lots of years with large amounts of data, and am pretty comfortable with analysis, but nowadays I like a little bit closer to granny rocking chair patio relaxing. Thinking, always thinking, but closer to appreciation, and reflection. Specifically, closer to releasing things with volume or timing stress. Creative? Yes. Absolutely, but lower key creative. Helper creative.
The South Seas self-seed blooms pictured above are super interesting. Notice that the coloring is quite similar, but the features are quite different. They are from the same year’s harvest, but, because I previously stored self-seed all together by daylily type, not individual pod, the pollinator efforts and the conditions may have been different (or not). The resulting two blooms pictured above could have come from the same pod, different seed. They could be different pods, same day. They could be same day, different pods, different pollinators (butterfly, bee …). They could be same day but different weather throughout the day. They could also be different pollinators, different conditions, days apart. Oy! And I could track some of that, but why?
For hybridizing, I do much more tracking. And going forward, how much I am willing to track will depend on how narrow I bring the scope. 5-7 various types of crosses sounds really good to me now, but if I start to try to replicate certain features, or eliminate them, more data may be helpful. However, for self-seed, I am not the pollinator (gasp!). And doggone it, the pollinators are notoriously bad at entering their contributions into my spreadsheet. They do not identify who stopped by, when, or to which bloom(s).
A little more relaxing and just enjoying for these is the message and the theme. That balance sounds good to me this year.
I hope you enjoy today’s pic, and I hope you have a wonderful day!
Susan's Daily Garden 
I am enjoying your pictures of South Seas and its permutations. I may have already told you it is one of my favorites. It is in a lot of my crosses. A lot. If you are at all curious and have some time to spare put South Sea or “ss x hpf” in the search box. ss x hpf is south seas x highland pinched fingers. I don’t always list the cross in the blog text but the pictures are usually named with the cross. So if you were to do a save on the image the name would come up in the file name. I have been doing crosses with South Seas and its kids since 2009 and I am still not tired with it. Thanks for posting your seedlings.
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Oh my goodness! I did not pick up on that! I am definitely going to do those searches! Thank so much for sharing!
Yes, I only have the self-seed blooms from South Seas, as squirrels seem to love the pods from my South Seas crosses. Arrggghhhh. But – Coral Majority (a child) is a wild child in my garden and very promising for hybridizing 😊 Not as a pod parent but as a pollen parent. Lots of seedlings last year. I am hoping for those blooms this year or next. And then last year I crossed Pink China Doll x South Seas and got 40 seeds. Fingers crossed on that. I also got 8 seeds crossing South Seas x Marque Moon. Those looked iffy, so I’m not terribly hopeful on those. My Marque Moons are failing and in the roots of the Linden so I fear they will be gone out of my daylily options in a few years. I did get one as a freebie choice a few years back (with order) but it too failed.
Oh, and I crossed a South Seas seedling x Coral Majority and got 10 seeds. That particular seedling was exceptionally pretty so I am fingers crossed for those too.
Thanks again, John! I really appreciate the encouragement and all the sharing!
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