Monday, July 20, 2009

Growing Stella D'Oro Daylillies from Seed

Stella de Oro daylilies are probably the most popular daylily hybrid because its smaller than a lot of other daylilies (12 inches as opposed to 3 or 4 feet!) and blooms pretty much constantly from May to July. As many of you already know, I LOVE lilies, and they were in fact my bridal bouquet!
Well we have some Stella D'Oro Lillies in our front bed, and they are done blooming and have produced BILLIONS of seed pods like this one:

Everywhere there was a flower there was a seed pod, and at Brett's Aunt Janice's suggestion, I kept the seed pods, hoping they would produce seeds so I could grow a crop of my own lillies. Hopefully I can make a border on the outside of our picket fence along the side of the yard by the street.

I cut them all off and dried them in the sun for a few weeks until they dried like this:


You can see in this picture where one of the dark little seeds is peeking out of the pod:
I pulled all the seeds out of the mature pods and ended up with about 50 or 60 of these. They look like little hard raisins.

After a bunch of research online, it looked like I couldn't just throw them on the ground and see what happened! Daylilies are normally bulbs you can dig up and transplant and divide, but when you grow them from seed they take a while to start flowering. So the first year they come up, they look pretty much like weeds. People who are experts recommend that you germinate the seeds and plant them in pots until they get a little bit bigger, then plant them in the ground and stake them so you know where you planted them.

This weekend I made a solution of one tablespoon of 3% (household) hydrogen peroxide in one quart of water.

Then I just dumped the seeds in a bowl with the peroxide solution. Don't ask me why, its just what the daylily people said to do! At first they floated, but by day 2 they had started to absorb the water and sunk to the bottom. Apparently now I just have to wait 3 or 4 weeks until I see a little root poking out of the seeds.
Then I'll plop them in a pot like I would any other flower seed and hope they grow! Some people get very into making hybrid daylillies and new varieties and patenting them, but I'm just hoping I get a flower of some sort...

Have any of you tried this before?

3 comments:

jd said...

I didnt know you were so far into this!! I mean youre becoming a botanist

Heather said...

I'm very interested to learn how your experiment turned out. Please email me and let me knowThanks!

Unknown said...

Actually Heather, I planted them all in a pot and left them on my back steps. My husband didn't know there was anything in the pot, and he piled in in the shed with a bunch of other empty ones. SO my experiment was pretty much derailed! Have you tried? If so, give me the details!