Jim M wrote: breeding > with triploids stresses that to use triploid pollen is to court failure. "Triploids are Fertile", by Nick Chase is an article that originally appeared in the Spring 1994 issue of The Daylily Journal. It was available online for a number of years, and perhaps still is-- a websearch on "daylilies-Triploids are Fertile", and/or with Nick Chase also added, turned up lots of references to the article, but not the article itself, unless it is included in the bloated PDF article you can download from the AHS website. Incidentally, many of the references you turn up on such a websearch will state flatly that "You can't pollinate diploids with tetraploids, or tetraploids with diploids" This is nonsense, and such webposts should be viewed with skepticism. You can pollinate a fencepost--with either diploid or tetraploid pollen. Pollinating is not the same as fertilization. One of the greatest advances you can make is to do something other people tell you is impossible--but you should be aware that you may not succeed. In fact, for an amateur, who often doesn't have much room, making wide crosses may well be a good idea--fewer seedlings will result, but they will potentially be more valuable. Few amateurs have the room to grow thousands of seedlings to select the best five or ten to serve as parents of further generations. If you go to the Rose Hybridizers group and search for fertile triploids, you find lots of references to roses which are confirmed (by chromosome counts) triploids that are fertile, some as pollen parents, some as seed parents, some with diploids, some with tetraploid roses, some with either. Lilium--I have a greenish yellow aurelian bowl which is from diploid parents, and I have made a few pollinations with diploids (both as a pollen parent and as a seed parent). Last year a friend suggested I make crosses of diploids with tetraploids in a deliberate effort to produce triploids, which are often more vigorous and floriferous than either diploids or tetraploids. I had made a couple crosses with diploids, so used tetraploid pollen on the remaining flowers. To my amazement, I got apparently normal fertilization, seed, and now, seedlings with both diploid and tetraploid pollinations. I've done the same thing again this summer, and so far it appears that there will be seed on this plant from both diploid and tetraploid pollen, and its' pollen is likewise apparently fertile on both diploids and tetraploids. The "Experts" will tell you it is impossible--but it is happening. The point is, men make rules--but the plants just keep on doing their thing, which is trying to reproduce themselves. They don't abide by men's rules. Each plant is unique, triploids are only sterile when you give up. One further example--there is a lily named Black Beauty, which is a wide cross, and doesn't set seed. For four or five years I made as many as three hundred hand pollinations on it per year, and got no seed. Then, one year, I got about fifty seeds. Repeating the same crosses in the years following didn't yield any more seeds. Unfortunately, at that time I didn't know how to do embryo rescue, and the seeds were treated like normal oriental lilies, and none germinated. I don't regard Black Beauty as sterile, although "everyone" says it is. Incidentally, you are often admonished to "protect the cross", often by covering the stigma with aluminum foil, paper bags, etc. Geneticists are particularly dogmatic about this. Open Pollinated (OP) seed to to some people is worthless. Here is a case where I would have been happy to get seed--any seed, even if from something other than the pollen I put on the stigma. Even if the seed resulting was not from the pollen I put on, it would have been better than no seed at all. Not knowing one parent isn't the end of the world. Not knowing either parent isn't the end of the world either--select seedlings for what they are, not what their parents were. Knowing the genealogy of the plants is necessary if you are trying to produce theories, but the flowers are just as pretty if you don't, and the plant may be valuable even if the parentage is unknown. Continuing to breed with such a plant is still possible, and in fact is probably normal with many plants, where, again with roses as an example, many named roses are the result of open pollination anyway. Even where the genealogy is known, seedlings appear that were not expected, new traits show up that had been unknown. What matters is what the plant can produce, not what the theory predicts it will produce. This is called "progeny testing" and it's a lot of work, but it does work. Ken