Please Read This Entire Page Fully! If you are not 100% comfortable with everything outlined below, please do not bid or buy. Your purchase is an acceptance of our terms!
In a nutshell:
- Payments via PayPal
- Happy to combine auction wins and website purchases over multiple weeks, just communicate
- We ship only to the US and Canada at this time. All others, don’t ask, the answer is no.
- We are not selling old seeds. All seeds are from the current season/harvest unless otherwise noted.
- All photos are ours from our garden.
- All seeds have been examined, bad or questionable seeds culled, and good seeds are appropriately dried and refrigerated.
- All seeds will be re-checked during packing! If they’re not good, you will be refunded!
- Seed growing is a gamble and results aren’t guaranteed, so don’t bid more than you can comfortably risk!
- For those that are new to this: Daylily hybrids do not come true to seed; every seedling will be an individual, unique bloom.
- We’ll treat you right, the way we like to be treated.
- Problems, questions, message first!
About Daylily Seed:
All daylily seeds are sold as-is. We will stand behind the parentage (the seeds came from the plant we say they came from, but you’ll still have to take us at our word as there’s really no way for us to prove it) and the quantity listed (there will be that many, or maybe a few extras, and on this, you can verify the count).
Remember, daylilies do not come true from seed; if you want “Explosion In the Paint Factory”, you can’t grow it from seed—you have to actually go buy a division or clone of that specific plant.
We cannot make any promises and offer no warranty nor guarantee regarding viability, germination, or the quantity/quality of the seedlings you wind up with. We consider seeds a gamble, so encourage all customers to only spend money they can comfortably part with and completely lose.
Shipping:
Know your state & local laws, and do not bid or buy if your local laws ban the importation of daylily (Hemerocallis) seed. We will not be held responsible for shipments that violate your local laws, and will not refund any shipment that is refused, delayed, seized, or destroyed by a governmental agency.
United States Postal Service (USPS) is our default option. For International Shipments, it is really the only cost-effective option.
Regionally, SpeeDee Delivery is an excellent option for larger packages, and FedEx and UPS are also options we can consider. But for Daylily Seeds, USPS is the best fit and really the only necessary option.
Note for Arizona Residents: Due to state regulations, we may be unable to ship daylily seed to Arizona. Buy at your own risk.
All US Residents: You can check your state regulations at https://www.nationalplantboard.org/state-law–regulation-summaries.html
Refunds of Shipping Charges: We do not refund shipping costs unless they are refunded to us by the carrier; shipping is a service you pay for to move what we have to you, not part of the product we are selling.
INTERNATIONAL PURCHASES:
We are willing to daylily seeds internationally, to any place which allows the shipment of ornamental perennial seeds such as daylily seeds.
We cannot furnish phytosanitary certificates at this time; they are extremely cost- and time-prohibitive here in the State of MN (e.g. up to roughly $80 per certificate, plus at least an hour of our time). If you are in a location that would require a phytosanitary certificate to receive daylily seeds, please do not bid or buy! The EU, UK, Russia, Singapore, Australia, and numerous other places all require phytosanitary certificates for proper seed import. At this time, we are willing to consider shipments to Canada, by request. Please email.
Canadian buyers; based on the 2021-2022 season, importing seeds from the US into Canada is likely becoming slower & riskier as the years have gone by, so I personally don’t encourage your purchase but will work with you if you choose to take on that risk.
International buyers are solely responsible for knowing and abiding by all their country and local laws pertaining to seed importation. Duluth Daylily follows proper declarations for customs on our shipments, and buyers are solely responsible for any and all customs-related costs, duties, tariffs, and taxes applied to their purchases. We will not entertain any requests to ship undeclared seeds to any country, so do not ask.
As we are unable to verify delivery internationally, and delivery may be delayed or even prevented by non-US governmental agencies, we cannot offer any guarantees regarding the delivery of daylily seeds abroad. As we are unable to verify that a customer has followed the proper laws and guidelines to import seeds, we are, again, unable to offer any guarantees or refunds on international shipments.
The bottom line, just as we recommend to bidders in our seed auctions, understand the risks, and we only suggest you make purchases with money you can afford to 100% lose!
Finally, it is worth noting that we do not daylily plants internationally.
Payments:
Duluth Daylily uses PayPal for all online payments. We use this platform in order to provide you with the highest level of security; your credit card information is never seen or stored by Duluth Daylily. You do not need a PayPal account to send payments through PayPal.
We are required to collect sales tax from Minnesota residents. We are a private hobby-scale garden; we are not a state-licensed nursery. Duluth Daylily operates under the umbrella corporation, MiniWaters LLC.
Returns:
We do not accept returns. ALL SALES ARE FINAL.
PROBLEMS WITH YOUR ORDER: If there is anything that you feel is a problem with what you receive from us, please email us FIRST and in a timely manner, within 24 hours of seed arrival, so that we can figure out how best to resolve the problem. We are reasonable people, but we will not abide scammers (who, thankfully, are relatively rare).
RUST NOTE:
Despite being a northern grower (3b to 4b here), several well-known vendors in the south and west sent us plants infected with rust during the spring and summer of 2022, and it spread among some of our other plants too. I’ve not been able to find any reliable information on whether rest can be spread through seed purchases, but if this remotely concerns you at all, please take prophylactic measures at your own discretion or do not bid or buy!
Daylily Seed Viability Research
I conducted extensive experiments on daylily seed growing during the winter of 2021-2022, and had surprising findings. Of note:
- While the ‘Lily Auction User Agreement’ sets the default germination rates of 80% or higher, as the acceptable range of germination, the seller may disclose their own standard which always overrides the Lily Auction default. However, looking at overall cumulative AVERAGE germination for every seller I purchased from, I had sellers range from 0% to 100% germination on their seeds. These extremes always represented a small amount of seed from a vendor…e.g. one or two packets. When looking at many of the most respected sellers here, where I purchased MANY seeds, the cumulative overall average germination rates went from 39% to 86%. Only ONE vendor in this group was above the proposed 80% threshold. In short, nearly all sellers’ seeds fell short of the proposed rate. Did I gripe? No, because I know there are MANY factors outside of the sellers’ control. The only time I requested any sort of refund was for seeds that were moldy or soft upon arrival.
- I found that ANY pre-germination treatments such as soaks or cold-moist stratification lowered germination rates, despite what many resources suggest. Some recommended pre-treatments even may have even outright killed seeds. I universally had the best results when planting seeds straight out of refrigeration. Therefore, based on stringently collected data, I do not recommend any special seed pre-treatment to “awaken” your seeds.
- I also found that the vast majority of seeds germinate in the first month, and two months post-planting, no further germination was likely. I actually went through every pot where germination had failed, and most of the time, I found a rotted-out husk, or even nothing at all. On the rare times when I found a hard seed, I refrigerated the seed & its small pot for 30 days, and then returned the pots to the growing trays for another attempt at germination. Only a very small fraction (perhaps 5-10%) germinated after this “restratification” period. Given these results, I think it’s best to only put a lot of effort like this into very special seeds, where every last chance at germination is desired.
- Another reality of germination rates is a correlation with specific grexes and/or parental plants. Some pollen/pod parents seemed to produce seeds that, while appearing to be good, clearly were not. Some past third-party research suggests that as many as 30% of daylily seeds may not have an embryo inside to begin with, even with great seeds. So it could well be that a 70% viability rate is normal for the best seed. Creating new grexes absolutely involves inherent unknowns and risks, so even with the best-looking seeds, I believe it’s impossible to predict the results unless it’s something that has been tried many times before. If the cross repeatedly failed to produce viable seedlings, at that point, stop making the cross, and move on to something else!
- Shipping also involves risk, particularly with any perishable or sensitive item. Perfectly acceptable seeds could leave here and, along the way, be rendered non-viable.
- As I’ve learned through selling hosta seed, how a grower works with seed is 100% outside of our control. We’ve sent seeds to close friends who have failed to grow anything, while seeds from the exact same lot are germinated and grown successfully by many others. It could very well be that the reported germination rates above were impacted by my own inexperience, and perhaps in future years of growing my own success with third-party seed could improve.
Given these many realities, it bears repeating, all seeds are sold as-is, and we do not accept returns. I cannot emphasize it enough – not every seed is going to germinate; this doesn’t mean that you didn’t get good seeds.
Viability is a total uncertainty and is not something that can be promised, in my opinion. You are not simply paying for seeds, but for all the time and effort we put into carefully pollinating, tracking, harvesting, testing, packaging, storing, rechecking before departure, and shipping the seeds to you. This is a partnership, where the seed buyer is receiving the benefit of all our work and effort, plus not having to own the plants themselves. When you buy seeds from us, you’re buying into that partnership.
As a gardener or grower, when you’re buying seeds of things like daylilies and hostas you are investing in a potential future, not a guaranteed reality. I think most people here already know, but daylilies do not come “true to seed” (unless we’re talking about matings within a species). As it pertains to daylilies, the outcome in terms of plant qualities and bloom traits are entirely unique and very unpredictable; it’s a genetic melting point and gamble, and each seedling is unique, just like a child.
I absolutely DO want to know how your seeds perform; my son and I want to take this into account when planning crosses for future seasons. If we find that there was simply a problematic grex based on our customers’ cumulative feedback, we may opt to unilaterally send refunds or replacements to people who got them at our discretion. So, your feedback is vital. Ask our hosta customers; we’ve been treating them fairly for years now.
Our promise is that we will do our very best. We will not send out seeds we are not comfortable with. We will work with you if there is a problem, within reason, particularly for the obvious issues that can arise through no one’s fault (lost packages, damaged seeds despite our ample packing, oversights on our part, those sorts of things). Please examine your seeds upon arrival, and if there are any smashed seeds or moldy seeds (there shouldn’t be!), send photos showing the seeds still in the packaging and a message within 24 hours of arrival. In these sorts of situations, we will refund the purchase price of the seeds without hesitation.
Questions?
If you are unclear on any of our terms, or have other questions, please contact us before making your purchase. Thanks!