Hi Gale, I am pretty new at this but have read many, many words about daylilys in general.

From what I have read pod and pollen parents do not pass on specific traits uniformly. There is some correlation however between the pod parent more likely to pass on plant habit ie. scrape height, hardiness, foliage color, etc.

As far as a northern hardy plant, most will be fine up to zone 5 as typical with most perennials. A dormant however probably does need the cold and will not do well south. A evergreen maybe will incur damage from trying to grow while there are still frost thaw cycles occurring.

From what I understand if you are using a plant that has a very distinctive features such as ROSE F KENNEDY for example that will pass on to most kids give or take. If you have enough seeds of a cross you are more likely to see the ends of the bell curve of likely outcomes.

Hope this helps some :) What I like to do is look up parentage of certain cultivars to see what the kids look like in certain crosses and what passed on and what didn't.

David

David, Yes, it does help. Thank you for the info.

Gale

The old saying was that the pod parent passes on foliage traits and the pollen parent passes on the flower traits.
From a practical point, the pod parent is usually the stronger parent; they produce more flowers, more scapes and can support more pods. Plants with fancy flowers tend to be more inbred and weaker, so using their pollen is more commonly used.

From experience, it makes no difference which are pod or pollen parents. You will get a range of seedlings with a mix of parent's traits. Select the seedlings with the traits that do best in your environment or what you're trying to concentrate. Ed

Ed, Thanks for the info, its great to have a place with people willing to share their knowledge.

Gale