Growing Daylilies Together

Pollinating

The majority of hybridizers use their fingers, some use tweezers (reverse tweezers are much easier to work with) or hemostats (also called a hemostatic clamp, arterial forceps or peang) to simply pull or gently break off an anther from one parent plant and carry it to the other compatible parent plant and dab the pollen gently on the tip of the stigma (pistol).

Some might instead use a tiny paint brush to collect the pollen from one bloom to dab on the other. The act of pollinating a daylily is that simple.

Record Keeping

After the act of pollinating is done, a jeweler's tag (or a colored wire) is attached to the base of the flower with the pollen parent written on (recorded in a log book when using wire) using an indelible ink (permanent Sharpie) pen. At this time,  it may not be condusive to time management if you take the time to write the pod parent at this time as some crosses will not take.

Note: When hybridizing, you will need to know the "Ploidy" of your plants. Tetraploids are bred to Tetraploids and Diploids to Diploids. You cannot successfully breed a Tetraploid to a Diploid.

_{Updated November 19, 2009}

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