The Sun Dragon Daylilies Breeding Program
Welcome to the entry page for my breeding program. This page will give you access to information resources that chronicle tetraploid (polyploid) breeding work.
While I have grown daylilies since the mid-1970s, my breeding program became a serious idea in 2008 and breeding efforts began in 2011.
The links below are to the main pages for each section of this chronicle.
From the beginning of my program my main interest has been tetraploids (and polyploidy in general). I worked with diploids initially to gain understanding of how the various genes that interested me were working by viewing large numbers of seedlings in the much more simple diploid background. This allowed me to understand how to plan my tetraploid program and gave me the background to pursue the tetraploids with more confidence and success.
While I am not actively breeding diploids in any significant numbers, I still have many diploid seedlings that I am testing for future introduction, as they came through the years of my rust resistance screening and continue to be screened for thrip resistance, and so represent valuable and important genetics for diploid breeders. For this reason, I will be continuing to make diploid introduction for several years to come.
My main breeding focus is now with the polyploid/tetraploid daylilies. I will though continue to register some of the best seedlings from my original diploid breeding for a few more years. Be sure to take a look at the new articles linked above for 2022 for a more conversational detailing of the work I have done in the decade since I began my program, at both the diploid and polyploid/tetraploid level, as sen through the lens of my introductions from 2016 through 2022. My program isn't really just one program, but has been several interweaving programs since the start, with each section serving a different purpose.
Now, in 2022, I have registered the first four seedlings that are from one or more of my own introductions, some from my species-like outcrosses with tetraploids and one from breeding within the modern hybrid tetraploid cultivars without any species backcross. These represent the blending of my original seedlings of 2011 through 2013. These represent both my outcrossing to species-like plants, as well as breeding some few select fancy cultivars with other exceptional fancy cultivars to allow for some work on the flower at the same time I have been working through my outcrosses to species and species-like bases (see 'The Four Bases').
Five of my thirteen 2022 tetraploid releases
Left Top: 'Dreams Become Things' and pollen parent 'Sun Dragon'
Left Bottom: 'Spice Eyes' and pollen parent 'The Spice Must Flow'
Right Top: 'Astraea' and pod parent 'Eos At Dawn'
Right Bottom: 'Elizabethan Lace Collar' and pod parent 'Elizabethan Fine Gloves'
