Re: Discussion on Origin of Sports
- To: hosta-open@mallorn.com
- Subject: Re: Discussion on Origin of Sports
- From: M*@aol.com
- Date: Tue, 27 Feb 2001 02:07:41 EST
In a message dated 02/27/2001 12:04:18 AM Central Standard Time,
sussextreeinc@ce.net writes:
<<
Do sports seem to show up in TC liners often because of the small pieces of
plant tissue used in TC and therefore any mutated tissues have a better
chance of not being suppressed by the dominant tissue?
>>
The reason there APPEARS to be a high rate sports in tissue culture is simply
explained by the high number of plants produced.
If Hosta were produced from callus tissue then I would answer this
differently.
If you were to divid clumps into thousands of plants like the numbers
produced in tissue culture you would find a corresponding number of sports.
Just in clumps-sports tend to be ether weaker growing than the original
plants and thus are over come by the mother plants or they are stronger
growing, as is the case with green sports off of variegated plants.
The tissue for the primary/terminal and the lateral buds is the same-but as
the buds form they release hormones that are translocated downward do to
gravity. These hormones suppress the growth of the apical meristems below
the highest buds. So the growth of a dominate eye is the result of being the
king of the hill-it is the highest bud and is not suppressed by other buds
but instead the hormones it release suppresses all the buds lower than its
self.
You can do an experiment in the spring-if you take and cut off the center eye
flat to the crown tissue you can see one of the lateral buds take over. A
number of diffrent smaller eyes will begin to grow but only one or at most a
few will keep growing.
This is a common occurrence here in the north-were the main eyes might freeze
off in early spring and new eyes must grow.
Dan if you hypothesis was correct you would find more sports in the North
were terminal eyes are killed off-often, instead of the south-but I have not
heard that this true.
Paul
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