Origin of Sports Discussion

 
Marcotrigiano:
 
As you can see by my response I DID say that on a yellow
background leaf it is possible that crossing over yields variegation. I
am surprised that we do not see 'twin spots' on a regular basis with
yellow hosta since somatic crossing over is not that uncommon.

OK Ben,
       This would be my question. If I understand the concept correctly, the greatest majority of these events would appear in the leaves as small contained spots, and that only a small percentage would occur in the meristem in such a position as to cause a solid edge. From this I would deduce that we should expect to see many spots of varying sizes in the leaves where the event had occurred outside the meristem and failed to produce a large amount of differently colored tissue. We do not see see the large number of spots that this theory would predict, yet we do see many green edged gold sports.  Why not?
       Dr. Marcotrigiano notes this as well. I would venture to say that I've seen a lot more hostas than he, but he is correct, these spots are rare. I have seen parallel adjacent areas of lighter and darker tissue on gold leaves three times that I can remember. In searching for sports I have looked closely at over a hundred thousand plants so far, without exaggeration.  None of the three came back the following year, much less stabilized into periclinal forms. One of the plants I saw this in was 'Amber Tiara' from Walters Gardens. Maybe CH Falstad can comment on whether he saw one of these and what happened with it. The other two were 'August Moon' and 'Piedmont Gold'.
                                                                                                                  ........Bill Meyer
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