----- Original Message -----
Sent: Wednesday, December 03, 2003 11:59
AM
Subject: Re: [iris-photos] Rainbow
Aril/AB #9 - Wm. Mohr
Francesca asks:
"If it is a sport, how does one treat it in classifying it. What is
a sport effectively? Have there been other sports and how were they treated in
the realm of registrations? Can someone throw light on this?"
Neil responds:
There have been a number of sports registered,
such as those that originate from Honorabile, including Kalidoscope (which may
or may not be identical to "Joseph's Coat"--originally an alternate name, but
I've been told there are clones circulating where each of the two
names is attached to distinctively different cv's).
One sport I know of was used in Schreiner
red-bearded white breeding and simply dubbed
"white sport of May Hall" and not registered or
offered for sale.
I posted a note about sports on Iris-talk (I
think) that will be reprinted in the Spring Tall Talk with a few minor
changes. For that reason I don't feel free to copy the text
here. The essence of it, however, is that a "sport" is a genetic variant
of a cv, arising not from seed but from a scion or division from the original,
is stable and distinct from the original in some manner.
I had a plicata sport once from CLARA
NOYES. Clara herself had a butterfly-wing veined pattern all over
the fall. I was very careful to check when I dug and divided. The
bloomstalk of the plicata arose from a rhizome that broke off from
a rhizome of the normal Clara Noyes.
As to "William Mohr Giant" the assertion that
fertile pollen was produced at times did not lead to any registered progeny as
far as I know. Fertility would NOT occur in a diploid (onco x diploid
TB) in any form other than by fertilization of unreduced gametes, which Wm
Mohr did rarely produce. The number of pollenizations made to get the
fairly good number of offspring must have been astronomical. I know that
I made many, many attempts and never got any seeds. "William Mohr Giant"
showing fertility says to me that it could NOT be a sport---the
chromosome count would have had to be doubled for fertile pollen to be
produced--ever. To get a doubled-chromosome William Mohr would have
required very tightly controlled application of colchicine or one of the
herbicides that had not been yet developed in 1951. I know of no
occurances of doubled chromosomes occuring other than with very tiny
seedlings, such as Orville Fay, Dr. McEwen and such people have used with
various plants--hems, Siberians, LA's (Kevin Vaughn) and JI's. No
published work that I know of describes techniques for use with adult
plants. I only wish there were--and we had doubled, fertile OYEZ or some
other of the diploid hybrids of the same type as William Mohr that came from
the early work of C. G. White. For such an occurance to occur
spontaneously boggles the imagination.
Close inspection of the beard in the photo of
"William Mohr Giant" suggests a flower 3/4 tall bearded to me. I
believe the form and pattern displayed also resembles a "Mohr" more
closely than it does the original William Mohr. Let me add I speak from
vast ignorance and large opinion without much humility attached.
Neil Mogensen z 7 western
NC
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