A picture is worth a thousand words :) I was thinking of the same thing too Nate, I made one with scrape height, type of dormancy, bud count, fragrant, increase would be better shown as a year to year picture comparison I think.

I was planning on using a spreadsheet with column headings for plant name, bud count, fragrance, dormancy, increase, flower size, height, etc. I think I'll add another column for parentage. Marg

I recently came across a program that is just awesome for hybridizing. Watch some of their videos about their program and see if this is what you had in mind. I would like to state that I am not affiliated with this company at all. But I have just started using their program and think it will make my life much easier. lol

Andrea

Here is a link that might be useful: Plant step

Andrea, I had forgotten all about that one. Thanks for the reminder. Marg

Wow, that sounds like it does all of the things that I already keep in a spreadsheet plus more.

I was thinking about what darobi (David?) said and it seems to me that with a yardstick, a camera, and some clever file naming, I could keep track of almost everything I want in Windows directory folders. And the photos will have date/time metadata in them already.

Thanks for these ideas!

Nate

I recall coming across an article (Found on the internet while researching something else) that outlined how Darryl Apps prepared for the evaluation of thousands of AHS registered diploid & teraploid cultivars being performance tested. A high-volume New Jersey nursery operation wanted to focus on a selection of reliable strong long season blooming daylily performers out of the 60,000+ registered cultivars on record at that time.

The evaluation checklist was reported to have 140 specific criteria ... The end result of this huge project was the introduction of the 'Trophy Taker Daylily' & 'Happily Ever Appster' trademarked daylily marketing lines of Blew Nursery, NJ. Keep in mind that they were selecting from known daylilies (Would it be any different for seedlings?) for the general gardening public who buy their plants from independent nurseries ... gardeners who would be unlikely to follow our familiar AHS & related databases & info resources.

I have never encountered this evaluation list of 140 characteristics anywhere ... So far. Such a seemingly incredible diversity of daylily characteristics becomes more reasonable, more plausible, more realistic when one considers our chosen plant 'broken down' logically:

Overall appearance (Balance); Roots; Crown; Leaves; Scape; Branches; Buds; Bloom; Vigorousness; Temperature (Zone) sensitivity; Recovery (Division); Seasonality; Disease resistance; Drought resistance; Metabolism efficiencies; etc. ... Considering 'Blooms' alone one can list easily 15-20 characteristics: - Coping with sun; rain; CMO; EMO; self-cleaning; hanging up; thrips effect; colour intensity; etc. etc. ....

Realistically, I don't think it would be too difficult to arrive at such a list of 140 points to look for & to evaluate.