Treflan seedling experiment

Hope one and all had a great Christmas Day and are enjoying the weekend. 
In Columbus we got hit with "only" 10" of snow, far less than those over
in Dayton and up in Mansfield and other places along that band of snow. 
We are warming up to mid 20's today and 45 by Wednesday - a veritable
heat wave.

Have any of you fellow members of The AHS Hybridizers' group started your
seedlings and applied a drop of the Treflan mix furnished us by Indiana
Bob?  The purpose of the experiment (for those not members or who did not
attend the last meeting) is to apply a drop of 0.086% Treflan with a 2%
mix of DMSO on the "just germinating" seedling in an attempt to transform
the seedling to a tetraploid.

About 10 days ago I inspected my seeds started on Thanksgiving weekend
and found the first round of germinating seeds to which I applied the
single drop of Treflan.  Each germinating seed that was treated was
marked by placing a small toothpick beside it.   Then weekly, I have
inspected the seeds and treated any new germinating seed - placed
toothpick to mark.  I planted about 800 seeds - 4 seeds/cell in 12-paks;
two trays.  Of the first seeds treated (two weeks ago), my guess is that
fewer than 5% have died from the drop of Treflan.  This group included
many streakies of H. 'Let's Streak' (seed frozen for 2 years - these from
Bill Nash), 4 different longipes plants, including l. 'Katsuragawa Beni',
and a couple of other cultivars.  m. 'Chirifu' seeds are just now
germinating and about half were treated this morning.

Would love to hear of your progress and observed death rate of seedlings
so far - via e-mail, either privately or on the robins.

Although we cannot know "for sure" of the seedling becoming a "tet"
without doing the chromosome testing, observing leaf thickness vs
controls will be interesting.

Charles Tuttle
Columbus  OH

Happy New Year

---------------------------------------------------------------------
To sign-off this list, send email to majordomo@hort.net with the
message text UNSUBSCRIBE HOSTA-OPEN
Other Mailing lists | Author Index | Date Index | Subject Index | Thread Index