Breeding goals: Margaret hand crossed two of our waterlilies with the intention of getting a particular color. Neither flower has really good form but both had some nice genetics behind them. When the season was over I counted the saved seedlings from that cross and by far we saved the most than from any other hand cross. Yes, 10 seedlings were kept and there was not any bias as we did not know the parents of the seedling before we selected it.
Now some reality sets in. In order to select 10 seedlings, you need at least 10 sprouted seeds and I just looked at her seed counts and she got 35 seeds from this cross and 22 from the same cross but with a switched pod parent. So 57 seeds that yielded an unknown number of sprouted seeds and 10 kept seedlings. So there are two possibilities: (1) It is a kick butt good cross(2) it is a good cross because you get lots more seeds that sprout. Either way, Margaret says she is repeating the cross.
Later: One of the flowers used for this seed cross was used for other crosses and and some not hand crossed seedlings. It was one of the parents in 17 kept seedlings. The other parent had only a couple more but was not used by itself for seeds. The really good seed parent is a private flower that we have never sold and is about 5 years old now.
