If you know the names of the daylilies, you can look them up on Tinker's Daylily Database or the American Hemerocallis Society database. Both will tell you the ploidy.

thanks for the suggestion, however, my problem really is that these are all seedlings and passalongs without any kind of i.d. known. I was just hoping to cut down on the wasted time of making crosses that weren't going to yield anything.

If you have set pods with both dips and tets, normal btw, you can stop after you get 5 or 6 on each side. Wait 5-6 weeks for the pods to mature. The pods of the side with the mismatched ploidy will usually fall off before maturing, but if the pods do open, let the seeds dry for a few days. The non-viable seeds will shrivel up to nothing. They also will initially appear black and shiny, but will be soft.

You just need one good pod to produce good seeds to confirm the ploidy. Without special aids, the normal success rate for tet crosses is around 40%. Dips usually go above 80%.

Tet pollen is usually larger than dip pollen grains, but the bands do overlap. It takes about a 100X microscope with a measuring graticule to effectively measure it.
Good luck, Ed

A measuring graticule? I'll have to see if they have one at my hobby store..... I bought the little hobby microscope. Has 100x 400x 900x. I don't know what I expected but the grains I looked at from known daylilies of both tet and dip looked the same, but I didn't have a way to measure. I'm glad I bought it though... it is really cool to look at a single grain with those swirling patterns or bands.

moonpie,
You might find Bill Waldrop's blog interesting. He is one of the premiere converters around and has some pictures of pollen grains through his microscope on the blog. Discusses dip and tet pollen as I recall.
Ed

Here is a link that might be useful: Bill Waldrop's Blog