Re: HYB: CULT

Betty, having unfortunately had a lot of experience using stressed plants for breeding, here's my two cents. Stress (late freezes, frosts, hail, erratic heavy rain, erratic high temps) results in reduced pod success <and> reduced viability (germinability) of seeds.
But the seeds that are viable have seemed to have better durability/survivability than those from 'better' years. The bad news is that diversity of gene pool is less, & when trying to walk the line between tough plants and pretty flowers, that's a problem.
I haven't done any controlled experiments to compare seedlings from the same cross from a bad year vs a good one.
The only data point I have is for IMM X CELEBRATION SONG, pods a couple of years apart. This was before I was burrito'ing to control chilling and germination conditions, so in addition to different pod formation environment, there were also different germination conditions.
The first batch resulted in around 50 surviving seedlings, only one with much height, many whites, one amoena, many creams, a few yellows, two lavender selfs, 2 cycle rebloomers.
The second batch resulted in fewer surviving seedlings (sorry, no data on # seeds or % germination), 4 talls, 3 amoenas, the rest either white or cream. No lavender selfs, no rebloom.
The sample size is too small to tell if that's a significant difference or just random, plus I don't have environmental data for comparison, other than that both of those were typical 'bad' years here (late freezes, frosts, erratic rain and heat).
In spite of late freeze, later frosts, microburst, hail, and heavy intermittant rain, I have to rate this as a good year, based on the number of successful pods. Either that, or as Paul Black suggested to me a few years ago, as I'm workign more and more with my own seedlings, they tolerate this kind of mess as "normal", so are more likely to be fertile. My guess is that it's some of both. 

Not sure any of that helps answer your question, Betty.

--
Linda Mann east Tennessee USA zone 7/8
East Tennessee Iris Society <http://www.DiscoverET.org/etis>
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