DaylilyNut -- Hybridizing focus: Midribs

Subtitled "Confessions of a rookie hybridizer:
Lessons learned the hard way"

My primary hybridizing goal, the one to which I have devoted the largest percentage of my crosses, is to enhance the width, brightness (whiteness) and contrast of the petal midrib on a bright colored flower. The form can range from wide and ruffled to narrow/relaxed and even spidery.

The potential for enhancing the contrasting daylily midrib seems to have been largely neglected by other hybridizers. Perhaps this is because there aren't enough people working to clarify the underlying base color of daylilies. Before I chose the goal of producing bright midribs, I had already committed to the more fundamental goal of brightening the base color of diploid daylilies. It is in flowers with a bright base color, that the potential for a beacon-like color contrast in the midribs is best realized.

My memory is now vague when trying to recall just how and when I first zeroed in on this hybridizing goal. I know I was looking for something that was distinct from the goals of other hybridizers. I noted that early hybrids often displayed new, richer colors which were "marred" by a persistent midrib. An example of this is the Nesmith 1952 introduction, Hemerocallis 'Red Resplendence', which has undergone a recent revival in the present "spider era" and is highly cherished today. Here's a picture of H. 'Red Resplendence', which has been growing here since 1989, and still among my 2005 "keepers".

In its day, H. 'Red Resplendence' had a state-of-the-art saturated velvet-red color, rivaling or surpassing all of its contemporaries. The color was its distinction. The form was not much different from the species. And neither Mrs. Nesmith nor anyone else in 1952 had yet managed to saturate the midrib with the red color. Over the following half century, subsequent hybridizers worked to widen petals and smother that nasty midrib "flaw", in hopes of obtaining a pure deep-colored self with ever better petal width and ruffling.

In the late 1980's and early 1990's I reasoned that the hybridizing efforts to saturate color across the entire petal had completely succeeded. By then, there were many, many cultivars available in which the intrusion of a lighter midrib color had been successfully eliminated. Yet hybridizers still seemed to instinctively loathe that annoying dominant light midrib.

As an organic contrarian, I remember deciding that if I returned to hybridizing for prominent midribs, incorporated into the modern forms and colors, and working to widen and brighten the midrib, I might be the first to embrace a significant "pendulum swing". I might possibly be one step ahead of other hybridizers in this one little area of distinction.

One of my benchmarks for daylilies is that I'd like them to strive to become as clear colored and yellow-free as petunias. And one of my cues and benchmarks for my daylily midrib hybridizing comes from the success petunia breeders have had in this genre. Here's a photo sampling some of the petunia results that I'd live to emulate:

In the subsequent 15+ years, I worked this goal in my modest backyard program, growing only about 1000 seedlings a year while working a full time job and raising two kids. All the while I watched to see if other, more experienced hybridizers with larger programs might trump me, latch onto this concept, and relegate my efforts to the compost heap. Surprisingly, it seems now that no one did, at least not as a major focus.

Still, I surely needed all of these 15 years, as modest and amateurish as my hybridizing efforts have been. After many missteps and difficulties, I think I've finally achieved a bit of stability and distinction in my midrib lines. Beyond simply working for wide, prominent midribs, my inherent bias against "yellowness" has remained the prime directive. That has pushed my program toward very brilliant white midribs. Indeed, I have a seedling which appears to have exceeded the whiteness of h. 'Gentle Shepherd', even though it has a deep purple color on either side of the midrib. More on that later.

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Now some detail about how I proceeded, once I made the decision that wide white midribs would be my primary hybridizing focus. It has often been a matter of trial-and-error. New hybridizers have much to learn as they start out -- but that's part of the fun of it all:

In 1991, I scoured the catalogs for daylilies which were registered as having prominent midribs. I ordered dozens, most without ever having seen a picture of the flower. Not surprisingly, the vast majority of them were older cultivars. Geraldine Couturier was a valuable source.

I received all my Spring 1991 orders, planted them, and then evaluated their bloom. Without exception, the older cultivars had dull, tan/sand/beige/melon midribs. They stood out boldly in comparison to the dominant petal color, but they simply did not fit my "vision". The only relatively new introduction that I had found with strongly contrasting midribs featured in the registration description was Bryant Millikan's H. 'Peppermint Stripe'. And that one almost seemed beyond belief! Not only did it have very wide midribs, but it also had among the whitest base color of any flower I possessed. Here was a plant that had already combined my two major hybridizing goals. It seemed this cultivar would save me years of effort to merge prominent midribs with a near white underlying color. Looking at this flower, I assumed it simply must be the "tip of the iceberg". Surely Bryant Millikan and other breeders had other similar looking or even better plants coming along in their seedling beds that would help me quickly toward my own goal. I knew exactly where I wanted to go with it. I wanted to create a whole race of "ultra- H. 'Peppermint Stripe's" in a variety of colors with much wider, more sharply contrasting midribs and with more saturated dark colors. H. 'Peppermint Stripe' seemed many generations ahead of anything else available to start my hybridizing.

Surprisingly, when I called Bryant Millikan on April 22, 1992 to discuss H. 'Peppermint Stripe', I learned that he didn't see any hybridizing directions to take it! It seemed a dead-end to him. In retrospect, I think one of the unsaid reasons may have related to the plant's flaws (much more on that later). But there was another reason -- one that I failed to realize until later, and didn't explore during our conversation because my perspective on this flower and Bryant's were so divergent that we were really talking right past one another (or at least seriously "not connecting".)

I found myself too shy to tell Bryant about my hybridizing goals, especially after I heard that he didn't seem to find H. 'Peppermint Stripe' to be particularly exciting. Why would a big name hybridizer want to hear the screwball ideas of an amateur beginner? Anyhow, I hadn't called him to get hybridizing "lessons" or advice but to find out what he thought about this amazing plant that I thought was completely in a class by itself. I had just assumed that he saw the plant just the way I saw it! So I wanted to find out how he was using it in his hybridizing -- there would be no way I could surpass the hybridizer's work with his own plant. So once I heard that he wasn't using it at all, I was kind of left speechless. The conversation really had no coherent direction after that. I told him how much I liked the plant in general glowing and enthusiastic terms, and told him that I wanted to hybridize with it, and he advised me to mulch it heavily during the winter to keep it from harm. (I found out later that Bryant did introduce one daylily from H. 'Peppermint Stripe', a cross made subsequent to our conversation. I often wondered whether my enthusiasm caused him to take another look at breeding with H. 'Peppermint Stripe'!)

After reflecting on that conversation over the years, and after having gained hybridizing experience in my own right, I can now see things from a clearer perspective. Because H. 'Peppermint Stripe' was a nearly new introduction, and because it was so precisely what I was looking for, I had just assumed that it was at the cutting edge of Bryant Millikan's program -- something in the mainstream, not just a serendipitous oddball. In fact at that time I had no concept of the fact that hybridizers could find unexpected spin-off's that were worthy of registering but which didn't fit in to their hybridizing goals. Because of the disconnect between my expectations about what Bryant would tell me about h. 'Peppermint Stripe', and what he actually did say, I didn't ask nearly as many questions as I now wish I had. I wish I could have explored Bryant's goal in making the cross and his reaction to what must surely have been a completely unexpected result. I could have picked his brain about breeding for near whites and would have learned a lot! But at the time, although I knew the parentage, I had no real understanding or appreciation of the unusual, even unexpected genetic "landscape" that underlies H. 'Peppermint Stripe'.

H. 'Peppermint Stripe' was a spinoff from Bryant's near-white program. Indeed, there was no reason to expect anything but white offspring from the cross that produced H. 'Peppermint Stripe'.

Here's an excellent photo of H. 'Peppermint Stripe', taken by Lynn Lewis -- click on it to see a larger version). H. 'Peppermint Stripe' was probably a completely unexpected splash of color among Bryant's near-white line-outs. It was a bright raspberry (as he registered it) or hot pink (as I see it) flower which resulted from a cross of two near whites with no known non-white ancestors.

Here's more on the genealogy: H. 'Peppermint Stripe' = (H. 'Joan Senior' x H. 'Aspen'), H. 'Joan Senior' = (H. 'Loving Memories' x H. 'Little Infant'), H. 'Aspen' = (H. 'White Temptation' x H. 'Little Infant'). H. 'Loving Memories' is a Spalding near white out of (H. 'Eternal Blessing' x sdlg). H. 'Eternal Blessing' is also a Spalding near white. Another famous Spalding near white is H. 'Call to Remembrance', which is probably somewhere in the ancestry as well. H. 'Little Infant' is a famous near white from Olivier Monette, famous because its offspring include H. 'Cantique', H. 'Sugar Cookie' and another important parent of my near-white lines, H. 'Wendy Glawson'. Because Olivier Monette worked for W.B. MacMillan, H. 'Little Infant' is surely related to H. 'Moment of Truth' and H. 'Robert Way Schlumpf'. H. 'Moment of Truth' has a background coming from a pale pink grandparent. RWS's known ancestors are pale cream in color; and its most famous descendent is H. 'Gentle Shepherd'. Finally H. 'White Temptation' is a near white product from Van Sellers.

So exactly where H. 'Peppermint Stripe' got the deeply recessive (or possibly mutated?) genes for its bright raspberry color is a mystery, but a serendipitous one for my midrib goal. From subsequent experience, I have concluded that H. 'Joan Senior' probably provided the midrib trait. And because of the intense near-white breeding line, H. 'Peppermint Stripe's base color is a very clean white (free from melon or yellow).

So despite all the many midribbed acquisitions that year, I rejected all but H. 'Peppermint Stripe' for hybridizing purposes. That left me with essentially nothing but out crosses to make -- i.e. not the planned crosses among the various midribbed parents. Thus in 1992 I made hundreds of crosses, virtually all using PS pollen. This included quite a few long crosses. The key pod parents which I chose had at least some hint of prominent midribs, and/or had very saturated dark colors. Among those which had midribs, Kate Carpenter's H. 'Lake Norman Sunset' was the clearest choice. I lined out more than 800 seedlings of (LNS x H. 'Peppermint Stripe'). Here's a view of H. 'Lake Norman Sunset', and, to its right is the single offspring of this cross that I have kept and used. It has the affectionate garden name of "rib break" -- as in "midrib breakthrough" not "broken rib"!:

With excellent vigor, branching and bud count and a good dark color with a hint of a lighter midrib, my second choice was Dave Talbott's H. 'Hamlet'. Pictured at left (click on the picture for a larger view), this one produced more than 500 lined out seedlings with H. 'Peppermint Stripe' as pollen parent.

Other clear colored flowers that I used included H. 'Grape Velvet' and H. 'Graceful Eye'. I had endless rows of seedlings bloom in 1994 from these crosses and have kept about a dozen of them, although most are bridge plants, for reasons that I will discuss next.

In my haste to embrace H. 'Peppermint Stripe' as the all encompassing "icon" for my program, I neglected its flaws. As a rookie hybridizer, I also had no concept of the nuances of using a genetic "oddity" as the cornerstone for a new hybridizing program. (PS was not selected because it was a fine plant, or even a good performing flower. It was selected because of the extremely distinctive color and pattern on a flawed flower and just an "OK" plant.) These were significant rookie mistakes for which I paid a dear price. My progress was noticably delayed. I had not grown PS, nor seen it grow in other gardens. As time progressed, I learned that it grows well enough under "good culture". But it is "finnicky" and lacks vigor when grown in ordinary soil -- a trait that I do not tolerate in my own plants. Worst of all, the flower has difficulty opening, and it passed this flaw to its grandkids in spades. Most of them barely opened at all, presenting contorted, half-open blooms which underperform "ugly" by a wide margin. This unfortunate result was revealed to me in 1996, when I bloomed crosses between several of the most promising seedlings from my original long crosses between H. 'Peppermint Stripe' and H. 'Hamlet', H. 'Lake Norman Sunset', and several others. To my great distress, there were absolutely no keepers from this entire crop! Today, almost a decade later, I still get too many seedlings with this flaw.

So my next break had to wait another year. It came from an outcross (yep, with another significantly flawed, difficult opening plant). In 1997 I bloomed a beautiful wide-ribbed seedling which was a cross between (H. 'Hamlet' x H. 'Peppermint Stripe') and Charlie Pierce's H. 'Tani'. H. 'Tani' has a soft melon pink color with wide midribs of a somewhat lighter color. However it also has trouble opening here in the north. At left is a view of H. 'Tani', which you can click on to get a larger view.

This break was a very unlikely result for two reasons. First, as said, H. 'Tani' itself has some trouble opening. Second, the only reason I owned H. 'Tani' at all was because a gentleman who I had never met, who arrived too late to get it into a club auction, simply handed the plant to me as a give-away! But this one seedling of just a handful that I bloomed from the cross between H. 'Tani' and (H. 'Hamlet' x H. 'Peppermint Stripe'), designated as seedling #97-06-28, opened consistently well, and looked great! At the top of the picture below is its parent seedling (H. 'Hamlet' x H. 'Peppermint Stripe') with #97-06-28 at the bottom of the picture. Below that are views of the individual flower and a clump of #97-06-28.

This was the one and only seedling that even remotely fulfilled the promise that I had envisioned 6 years earlier. It opened well, had wide, brightly contrasting midribs, and had a strong contrast in color between the ribs and the rest of the petal color. The plant was vigorous, with good foliage and good increase. The main weakness (or flaw) was a limited bud count.

Lacking anything else worthy beyond this seedling, I used it heavily. I crossed it with "rib break", the best seedling to come out of the 800+ long cross of (H. 'Lake Norman Sunset' x H. 'Peppermint Stripe'), and with several other first generation H. 'Peppermint Stripe' seedlings. I also made more outcrosses, as I had continued to search for parents with at least some of the qualities I wanted. Ultimately I found four new parents which proved important. Pictures of three of these -- Lucille Guidry's H. 'New Testament', Darrell Apps' 1992 H. 'Velvet Star' which is (H. 'Joan Senior' x H. 'Super Purple') and H. 'Jedi Little Mike' (D. Wedgeworth, 1992) -- can be found at Tinker's Database by simply typing in the cultivar name then clicking the "search" button.

The fourth parent, which I originally did not intend to use in the midrib program, snuck in the back door to become very important. This is the Yancey 1986 very clear lavender H. 'Oceanside'. This flower has a very near-white base color. And since Clarke Yancey is also famous for producing H. 'Gentle Shepherd', I felt I could trust its pedigree in my "get the yellow out" program. The most important cross I made with H. 'Oceanside', was a "just for fun" cross to a very vigorous seedling with an intriguingly flesh-colored flower from (H. 'Graceful Eye' x H. 'Peppermint Stripe'). And the most important product of that cross was a rousingly vigorous plant with a large lavender-self flower. Now registered as H. 'Floozy', this seedling had only slightly lighter midribs. But I liked it because it featured a clear color that made it look slightly more blue than H. 'Oceanside'. (To my eye H. 'Oceanside', and especially its offspring H. 'Floozy', suggest a wonderful approach to a blue self.)

In another (originally unrelated) "just for fun" cross, I put H. 'Oceanside' on a gunmetal-gray seedling that I kept from the cross of (H. 'Grape Velvet' x H. 'Peppermint Stripe'). The intent of this cross was to clarify that gunmetal-gray or pewter "overwash" that seems to cover a darker layer of deep purple pigment underneath. You will better understand what I mean by this color description if you view the best keeper from that cross, which is shown elsewhere on this web site: Seedling #00-05-27.

Then in further pursuit of the goal of clarifying this gray/pewter color, I crossed H. 'Floozy' with #00-05-27. Well, I didn't get a single seedling with that gray overwash effect. But what I did get was a very vigorous deep purple seedling with shimmering white midribs and the whitest underlying color of any flower I had ever seen. It goes by the garden name 'white line'.

Below is a picture of much of the genealogy of 'white line' mentioned above. At the bottom is the resulting seedling, formally called #03-WhiteL. Across the top row, from left to right are great grandparent H. 'Grape Velvet', double grandparent H. 'Oceanside', and another grandparent, the flesh colored seedling from (H. 'Graceful Eye' x H. 'Peppermint Stripe'). The left middle flower is seedling #00-05-27, and the right middle flower is the blue-lavender H. 'Floozy' (with its two parents above it. In the small clickable picture at left, you can see the complete genealogy of H. 'Floozy' which includes H. 'Graceful Eye' and H. 'Peppermint Stripe' on the top row):

The two grandparents of this seedling (H. 'Oceanside' is the other grandparent on both sides) were both children of H. 'Peppermint Stripe', so a result with midribs should not have been a surprise. But the greater surprise was the degree of whiteness, both of the midribs and of the underlying color of the flower in general. This seedling, #03-WhiteL, was arguably whiter than any flower I had seen at the time, even though it is a dark colored self. The white is in the underlying tissue. To demonstrate its whiteness, here are two photos of a bisected petal (with exposed interior tissue) of #03-WhiteL in juxtaposition with H. 'Gentle Shepherd':

Seedling #00-05-27 produced another one of my important parents through an outcross with the near-white, H. 'Charleston Snow'. So as of 2003 I was finally making some progress. I had five quite diverse parents all of which had the characteristics I was seeking in the midrib line.

My philosophy of hybridizing seeks to maintain genetic diverstiy. I want to line breed in "broad lines", so my first impulse is to avoid sib crosses. I believe that when you have a good stable of well-understood parents (at least four or five), but with limited stock of each, you can sort out genetic influences without "wasting" valuable pod space on simple F2's. No two parents should be that much more important than others in a serious working line (assuming that you're committed to the line for the long haul and not just seeking an optimized "finished product" to sell). I even try to avoid crossing two flowers with a common parent when possible.

So I always strive to keep a healthy mixing bowl of genes that will stave off inbreeding depression. Here are the five in the center of the mixing bowl at present. All five of these were chosen not just for their face but because, as of the 2005 bloom season, they have demonstrated great merit as parents: