Is my lily a hybrid?
By Feefee1
CLEVELAND,
United Kingdom 
I planted some lily bulbs about 4 years ago, they were all bright yellow lilies, as the years have passed they have multiplied. Now this year i have had the yellow ones as usual but i've had 2 stems that have flowered very deep red and 3 stems that have flowered a lovely peach colour. The thing that we've noticed with the peach one is that for some reason it has 9 petals, i've never knpwn this before all the others only have 6. Does anyone know this has happened, my husband thinks this is rare.
10 Jul, 2008
Previous question
Hi Feefee... you're new to goY, aren't you? welcome.
You may well have a treasure... I'm no expert at plant biology...but you will find some interesting information about plant genetics is you google "polyploidy" or tetraploid... plant breeders in some lily species(most noteably daylilies) have produced plants with 44 sets of chromosomes which means that each plant can produce many offspring of different appearances! check it out...it's a little complicated but for the most part you will be surprised to see what's being done. I call them plant Frankensteins...lol. but that's just my personal opinion..
sounds like you have something lovely and you've been fortunate to see the wonder of natural selection first hand... Cheers,
Lori ; )
10 Jul, 2008