Here is a question that I have never seen discussed. We know that some species are self-infertile but others are self fertile. What is the situation in hybrids? Selfing is a standard practice in other plant groups to explore recombination potential. Has anyone ever selfed named daffodil cultivars and a). gotten seeds, b). been able to get anything interesting?
Harold
Harold, I don’t normally self cultivars but have selfed some miniatures and got some nice seedlings. My miniatures self themselves a lot as I have to go around and pull off seed pods or I would have op seedlings every where. The same with poets, some standard daffodils develop seed pods also. I think most op seed pods are really self pollenated as I very seldom see bees or other insects visit blooms. Wind can bounce the flowers around and possibly deposit pollen on the stigma . A lot of nice daffodils have originated from op flowers. A lot of the time here, anthers will elongate and touch the stigma so I usually remove the anthers first but not always. Of course sometimes I want to collect the pollen anyway to use in other crosses. If I see the anthers are not close to touching the stigma I may not remove them as I know my applied pollen will get to the stigma first.
Here in the PNW I do not get many self pollinated flowers. Bees are rairly seen while daffodils are in bloom. Out of 500 crosses a year I get maybe 10 self pollinated seed pods. I do plant these seeds or give them away. Depends on the quality of the seed parent. Time will tell if the OP seeds will produce good off spring better than the parent.
I have selfed some species daffodils, but that was more to insure I got
more species and not some sort of cross. Not much to report.
Bill Carter, in NC I had a whole “herd” of bald-face hornets that were
always working my daffodils. If I did not get to the daffodil quickly the
bald face hornets would pollinate the flower first. So unlike you, I had
so many hornet pollinated seeds I could not plant them all. I chose some,
but mostly I crushed the seed pod of the unwanted..
Clay
I would not self a hybrid daffodil as I assume it would lack vigour. I guess that species daffodils naturally self in order to keep their gene pool clear.
I wonder then how many OP hybrids have become sensational show flowers?
This is in reply to every one above.
David Adams. While selfing will lead to inbreeding depression (lack of vigor). It should take about 5 – 7 generations to show. So that is no real worry.
Larry Force. Thank you for your observations. It suggests that perhaps we are missing out by not trying to self pollinate standard hybrids.
My question was more concerned if standard daffodil hybrids will actually make seeds if they are deliberately self-pollinated. I had wondered why no one seemed to have ever done this. Is it because they already knew it would not result in viable seeds?
In our area some species are usually self pollinating but standards never make open pollenated seeds.
I suppose I am going to have to go out and self pollinate a bunch of daffodils to test this myself.
Harold
I can’t speak from personal experience, but I did some searching on Dafflibrary and found the following from W.O. Backhouse quoted in the December 1968 Daffodil Journal (article: “THE LEGACY FROM W. O. BACKHOUSE”):
“These plants were, as is usual with the species Narcissus, self-sterile or only very slightly self-fertile. I was not able to ‘self these and therefore inter-pollenated the sister plants originating from the first cross . . . In the beginning, when a breeder finds a new break, he has as a rule no option but to cross the new break with the old varieties obtained in preceding years. In no case was it possible to get viable seed from selfing, as properly understood. The odd seed one might get from this is not worth the time and trouble . . . In the literature on daffodil breeding, one constantly reads of such-and-such a variety ‘self-pollenated.’ There undoubtedly are some which give plenty of seed when such a variety is ‘self-pollenated’—’Lord Kitchener’ is one, and the pinks seem more amenable; but in my experience the great majority of red cups are self-sterile, although at the same time perfectly fertile with any other pollen. There are some, of course, which are just simply sterile, although a variety written off as sterile will sometimes, some years suddenly set seed and upset all calculations.”
https://dafflibrary.org/wp-content/uploads/1968_Dec_ADS_Journal.pdf
Ross
There seems to be several different opinions here. I can only say my miniatures set seed very often, especially division 1’s, Of course they are still very close to the species. The poets set seed a lot also. I occasionally have op seed pods on hybrids . Why don’t we all self a few hybrids this spring and report back later. This will be an interesting experiment. If the pod parent is fertile and the pollen is fertile I believe most will set seed. I personally have planted a few op seeds and got some pretty nice flowers. I can’t say for sure if they were selfed or crossed with another daffodil by a bee or another insect.
Ross:
Thanks for doing that research. Perhaps this is where the reluctance to self-pollinate comes from.
Larry:
Yes I will try some selfing and see what happens.
Harold
Ross, thank you for doing the library research. I guess this is where the reluctance to self comes from.
Larry, Yes let us doing some selfing. Hopefully the rain we are having will not wet all the pollen.
cheers
harold
If when we are seeking true self pollenation, consider the following :are we allowing insects to be sources of pollen in self pollination? If insects are involved, we must realize that they may carry pollen from other daffodils and we may not have true self pollination.
I keep seeing the term of hybrid daffodils. Just about all the standard
daffodils are hybrids. Some species are large enough to be standards, but
of the 30,000 or so daffodils in the world, only a few are species. Insects
do not self pollinate anything. They go from plant to plant and they
pollinate from multiple sources. Self pollinate is when the daffodil
itself is used to pollinate itself. It can be species or hybrids. And if
you don’t get to it fast enough and have insects about, your self
pollination may be secondary to what the insects have already gotten there
first and pollinated the plant for you.
I have not purposefully self pollinated any of the standard daffodils.
Species yes, standard no. So I have no idea of what you will get.
However, if my frozen daffodils come out of the ground and blooms this
year, I might just try it. I know they are alive as I have some batches
of RES about two inches out of the ground and are already showing buds
above the ground.
Clay
I’m far from a Daffodil hybridizing specialist. What I learned in hosta is that viable parents will produce sterile children. In fact, I know of one highly fertile pollen parent that produces beautiful children with near 0 viability as either pollen or pod parent. I encourage those of you selfing to try and choose hybrids without any common ancestry. It is a common consequence for a superior cultivar to be used frequently in hybridizing programs believing superior traits will be passed on. Hybridizers can’t help themselves. They want to build on popular proven success and may be passing on lowered viability
frank
I thought Throckmorton’s comments in the article I linked to above were interesting, too. If I understand correctly, his opinion is less optimistic about the self-fertility of daffodils than even W.O. Backhouse?
“1. Daffodils are self sterile. In the literature and catalogues the term ‘selfed’ really means open-pollinated—the late Guy Wilson and Mrs. Lionel Richardson are my authorities for this statement.
2. To sort out and ‘fix’ a new feature in a daffodil, line breeding is essential. As daffodils are self-sterile, crosses between siblings or between siblings and parents are the only real means to this end.
3. A knowledge of a daffodil’s ancestry is the essential ingredient of line breeding.”
“How often have we overlooked W. O. Backhouse’s secret! Take almost any truly great modern daffodil through a retrospective study, and you will be amazed at the intense line breeding in the parentage. Thus, the great daffodil hybridists of the past have, through skillful selection of plants, carried out a diluted form of line breeding. W. O. Backhouse has made possible a breeding program with a much higher yield of good material: Have faith in your ugly ducklings; plaster the stigma; look out for rain and cold—and above all know your ancestors.”
I tried what he suggested and looked at the pedigrees of some of my favorite main division daffodils on Daffseek. Indeed, there were a lot of recurring names, but no selfing that I found. I thought his advice on keeping your ugly duckling seedlings and crossing them with their siblings and parents was interesting, too. Is this something many daffodil breeders do?
I have rarely seen insects in my daffodil patch except for bumble bees. They get their nectar by burrowing through the neck of the corona, not near the anthers. They usually pick your best show flower as well. Yet many (if not most) flowers left on the plant set seed. Does our climate assist this?
I have rows of seedlings planted about 4ft apart. They have been left down for about fifteen years. The gap between the rows is now full of new seedlings both flowering and at different stages of development. I have marked and selected some of excellent show form. Given the previous discussion how did this proliferation of new cultivars happen?
At times I have collected the OP pods from named cultivars and grown them on. Some resulting new cultivars have been named. We cannot tell if the seeds have come from selfing, from insects or from wind blown. DNA may be helpful !!!
Lewis:
In my climate The large standard hybrids never make seed unless they are hand pollinated so i can discount insect pollinations. But this is not true of some of the smaller species and tazettas. I see a variety of insects visiting the tazettas.
Ross: I think most breeders ignore their ugly ducklings. But perhaps they miss the potential of their material thgen.
David: I would guess your bumblebees are doing some pollinating as well as robbing. But your getting so many seedlings is interesting. What do other Kiwis say?
Thanks for the observations
harold
David –
I’m not a hybridizer but nary a spring goes by that I do not find fat bumblebees sitting in blooms, particularly large blooms such as trumpets. I actually saw one in a trumpet fall over as if drunk. I have not found side holes where they’ve entering and can’t believe some unintentional pollinating has not gone on as I frequently find pods.
Linda
Look at this article please, The inheritance of the red and pink colour, the fertility of triploids, and the self incompatibility of daffodils remarks to (1)
Theo
Thanks Theo for joining in on the discussion of self fertile and red and pink daffodils. Your article answers a lot of the questions that were asked.
Thank you Theo.
What you say makes a lot of sense.
There are however a number of features about narcissus fertility that are still not clear.
I can take 10 or more flowers of the same cultivar and of the same age and pollinate them all with the same pollen from the same flower at the same time, and find variable seed set. Many having no seeds, some with a very few seeds and occassionally one or two filled with many seeds. Any ideas what is going on here.
Harold
Has this got to do with the age of the flower and the climate factors when the actual pollination is done? If one flower opens on Monday and another on Tuesday they may be in different stages of receptiveness if they are both pollinated on Wednesday. May be the pollen also has to be exactly the same age. You say the flowers are the same age but, to be precise, do they open at exactly the same minute?
I think David is right: You cannot hold the conditions for pollinating really constant and moreover the constitutions of the single flowers are different.
If you get from one cross mostly no seeds or few seeds, but some capsules with many seeds, it is possible that the many seeds come from open pollination.
Theo
David and Theo:
Normally I pollinate flowers within the first 1-2 days that they are open. I do believe that flowers can be too old and then they are not receptive, but I do not believe that there is such a limited receptive window that it can explain my results. I often force buds open and pollinate flowers then and still get seeds even if the stigma has yet to expand.
Theo I never get seed set on standard spring daffodils in my climate unless I pollinate them. That will not explain my results. Honey bees do not usually visit my daffs and I have not seen bumble bees in our area for the last 10-15 years. I grow so many daffodils that I would have expected to collect some spontaneous pods from insect pollinators if they ocurred. I do of course get spontaneous seed set on N. papyraceus, miniatus and some of the Emerald Sea hybrids in the late autumn, but not on big standards.
Maybe my conditions are just wierd.
Harold
Ah then Harold, has the pollen you put on taken, when the stigma may not be ready, or has the flower open pollinated/selfed at a later stage? Your original question has sparked a wonderful debate. To quote an old radio programme ‘The answer my friend is in the soil.’
Dave again:
With standard daffodils there is no open pollination unless I have put pollen on the stigma. Likewise standard hybrids do not self under my conditions.
Harold
Dave:
Again under my conditions standard daffodils only make seeds if I put pollen on the stigmas. The problem is that they don’t always make seed when I pollinate them.
Harold
We always say that it is best to pollinate about the third day in dry, still conditions, when the stigma is sticky.
Since 2010 I have made 2,500 crosses. Of those crosses 20 were same pollen on the seed parent. 4 produced seeds. Hawaiian Skies, Irish Crème, Lightning Fire 2O-R, Strawberry Cream 2W-P. They may bloom this year. I’ll let you know what the blooms look like compared to the parent.
Bill:
Please report back when they start flowering.
Harold
In the book Yellow Fever on Dafflibrary, David Willis has:
“Examination of the old record books of hybridists will frequently show the term ‘selfed’ or SP (self pollinated), which indicates that the breeder thought that the seed parent had been self pollinated, i.e. pollinated with its own pollen. The vast majority of plants, however, possess mechanisms that render this and the consequent self-fertilisation difficult if not impossible. […] Until fairly recent times, the term ‘selfed’ has generally been used by hybridists when, in fact, they did not know the name of the pollen parent owing to the cross being the work of a bee or other insect. In more recent times, the more correct term open pollination, or OP, has been used.”
This may explain why earlier records indicate so much selfing, and maybe that intentional selfing hasn’t been tried often?
Another thing I wonder about is pollen’s ability to be airborne. When I bring pots of my species daffodils inside to collect pollen, I’ve found that minimal agitation causes pollen to become airborne and stay so for up to a minute. If there are any receptive stigmas nearby, I don’t see how some of this pollen could avoid landing and sticking. On the other hand, pollen of tetraploid hybrids tends to fall sideways and downward. This may explain why species and miniatures “self” more easily (even in the absence of insects).
Thanks Ross for the above explanation concerning selfed, or OP crosses and how they have been indicated in the past. Even now these terms can be somewhat confusing. Were they actually selfed by themselves or helped by bees, insects or wind. I mark my crosses as selfed if I actually make the cross and apply it’s pollen myself. Pods and seeds that originate on their own without my help are marked as OP crosses as I don’t know for sure where the pollen came from, self, bees, wind or whatever.
I will mention again that some daffodil hybrids, as the flowers mature, the anthers elongate and actually touch the stigma. In which case it could surely self it’s self. This probably happens in other areas also. Have been making some selfings and it appears pods are beginning to form. It remains to be seen if pods mature and form seeds. They have in the past.
I get open pollinated pods all of the time. If I do not pick the pods, seedings foul up the works as op seedlings show up about 7 years down for a planting. Poets are the worst, but I have seen everything provide at least some confusion. There are some cultivars that are very infertile some produce almost no pollen, some almost no seed.
A trick that is done with lilies is to place x rayed pollen of another cultivar on the stigma to break the self infertility and then one can follow up with whatever pollen one wants to. Some of the species do not make pollen tubes long enough to reach the ovaries.
I have not resorted to shortening of stigmas for daffodils yet, but this is done with lilies. I think there are ways to make selfs possible. I think mainly on how I am going to improve flowers by providing a new hybrid that overcomes one or more faults or makes improvements in one or more areas.
I cannot say I have not enough flowers to keep me busy. I find having the restraint to not to make too much work for myself later to be the biggest factor in breeding. Other than a couple of years I have planted thousands of seeds each year that turn into hundreds of flowers to evaluate later.
If someone is interested in x rayed pollen I can make up a batch for you for dispatch in May sometime. I could also do Gamma, but this process to too hot and often denatures the enzymes you want to keep it runs about 65 degrees C We could also do electron beaming or plasma treatments but these are highly interactive with substrates and well treated uniform samples are difficult to make. If someone is interested, I can make up some pollen of specific types or mixtures as well.
Thanks Mike for adding your input to the Question For Hybridizers.
I also get op seeds quite often. I certainly agree with you about the poets, they are highly likely to set seed pods. I have to go around after blooming and remove all the op poet seed pods or seedlings would be coming up everywhere.
Yes, hybridizing can start as a fun hobby thing, but it soon can turn into lots of work if one does not restrain from making too many crosses. I keep saying I need to cut back on crosses, but as you begin to bloom your own flowers it’s hard not to make crosses with them.
Take care,
Larry