This post is a little lesson in the power of ancestry and recessive genes. Never underestimate the power of recessive genes, carried at the heterozygous level, to reappear and create considerable advancements in phenotype that might be mistaken for a "mutation" or major "leaps" in your program. When you don't see a trait in the seedlings of a cross, that doesn't mean you "lost the trait (gene)". It almost always means that the trait is recessive and is now heterozygous and not seen in the seedlings, thus not "lost". We far too often only think about what we see, but if you know what a given plant or animal in your program carries, then you can utilize it to full advantage.
In this example, in the images below, we see two of my introductions 'Sun Dragon' and 'Substance Upon Substance', and three seedlings from the cross of these two cultivars. You can see a considerable increase in ruffling, as well as the reemergence of the melon mutation in one example, carried recessively by both parents, and dilution factors creating lighter colored flowers than either parents, also carried from ancestors such as Solaris Symmetry (pod parent of Sun Dragon).
We also see a tendency toward edge-no-eye coloring in all three seedlings (deriving from SUS, who shows a hint of that as the color changes through the day) and the final seedling shows some pink splashes of broken patterning, another trait that SUS occasionally shows. Pink is possible out of an "orange" and a "yellow" because Sun Dragon has a lavender parent, multiple pink ancestors (Janice Brown, Mystical Rainbow), and expresses a layer of lavender anthocyanin over a golden carotenoid base which results in our eyes perceiving it as "orange".
Sun Dragon, often perceived as "just an orange", actually produces many lavender and pink seedlings. Substance Upon Substance also carries pink, which expresses as a rose overlay that gradually fades away during the day, first revealing the yellow under color, before the flower fades on to a cream/beige by late evening.
Never underestimate those hidden, heterozygous recessives!
Check out my new Substack where I am posting my older poultry and daylily articles and will be writing about genetics and breeding in the future - The Art Of Breeding with Brian Reeder
For those interested in my daylilies, you can read about my program at my website Sun Dragon Daylilies. You can find the complete list of my daylily cultivar introductions at the website, as well as a section of categories that my introductions fall into, which makes finding the specific things you are interested in much easier. You can also find a page covering the introductions from my program that have high permacultural applications. Finally, to read all the fine details of my program, see my blog, Daylily BReeder, and specifically the Main Page detailing my breeding program.
My poultry books, An Introduction to Color Forms of the Domestic Fowl and An Introduction to Form and Feathering of the Domestic Fowl are available through Amazon.
I offer one-on-one consultation for those who have specific questions or issues in their own breeding programs, and I offer mentoring for those who wish to take their program to the next level.
