Bud Sports Defined Again

Jim Hawes wrote:
> 
> Robins,
> 
> Enough has been written about hosta bud sports that any serious
> student of Hosta physiology should be writing this summary essay, not
> reading it. This post is intended to try to correct some obvious
> misunderstandings recently stated in various posts.
> 
> "Bud Sports" occur in many Genera of plants. They have been researched
> and described in scientific literature as early as the 1930's. They have
> been defined as growth from buds which differs from the mother plant as
> a result of a mutation in one cell, which grows, differentiates into
> other tissues and eventually becomes a complete plant once roots become
> an integral part of the organism (usually by its separation from the
> mother plant). In hostas, bud sports can take the form of chimeras or
> monocolored forms.
> 
> In hostas bud sports occur so frequently that they have been
> characterized (by me in attempted artistic terms) as being DRAMATIC.
> They put on a drama...a show,  with their beauty, their number and their
> diversity. To be convinced of this, simply look at the Hosta Wheel 1999
> Document, where you will find 174 Groups of Related Sports. Each Group,
> for general use and for simplicity, is called a "wheel". In the wheel is
> the first plant which, as a seedling, produced a bud sport . The wheel is named for that first  plant (the
> progenitor) which produced a sport. Other processes (causal factors)
> also occurred later to produce other sports. These processes are of
> academic and scientific interest to Geneticists, Botanists and other
> scientists of which there are less than a handful within the hosta
> community.
> 
> A bud sport becomes a "plant" if the sprouting bud is cut off the mother
> plant tissue with some roots. A mutation may be or may not be the causal
> factor in the production of a sport....there are other causal factors
> besides mutations. IMO, one should not use the word "sport" as a verb.
> The original term "bud sport" referred to a plant or plant part, not an
> action or process. If one does not know the causal factor for a bud
> sport, one should simply say the plant "changed" from one form to
> another form(a sport). One should certainly NOT say ...the plant
> "mutated" from one form to another form unless you are sure of the
> causal factor.
> 
> I suggest that we, as gardeners, are not primarily interested in the
> "causal factors". But if "we", comprising many individuals,  are
> interested, then we should study these complex subjects of Botanical
> Histology, Morphology and Cytology on our own initiative to our hearts
> content, to learn about them for our subsequent benefit....but not
> depend on others to do our thinking, reading, studying,analyzing,
> remembering and explaining for us.
> 
> Jim Hawes

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