CULT: Dud Rhizomes, and a Compass
- Subject: CULT: Dud Rhizomes, and a Compass
- From: h*@aol.com
- Date: Wed, 23 Feb 2000 12:24:41 EST
From: hipsource@aol.com
In a message dated 2/23/00 11:28:13 AM Eastern Standard Time,
hipsource@aol.com writes:
<< One is this: I've said here before that I think there are some dud
rhizomes of otherwise good irises and I was puttering in some old iris
literature not long ago and ran into something of this sort stated. I will
see if I can recall where and post same if I do. >>
Okay, I found it. And I'd be curious to hear from anyone who is up on plant
science as to whether current thought supports the idea of orientation to the
cardinal points, or the sun, or something else, as a factor of potential
interest in these matters.
From the 1957 Year Book of the British Iris Society, p.63, H. Senior
Fothergill is speaking........
"I read something the other day which recalled my having puzzled many years
ago over apparently inexplicable differences in the growth of plants from the
same clone. One would breakup an old clump of irises, select and replant,
say, seven rhizomes, all of the same size and of apparently equal health and
vigour, and find that one or two of them would do much better than the
average, and one or two of them do far worse, the difference between the best
and the average and between the average and the worst, being so great as to
be of real significance. And this would happen more often than would seem to
be accounted for by likely difference in soil in the space of less than a
square yard. Later I heard of the idea that living things might be affeted by
their angle of orientation to some datum point, say the magnetic north, and
while I had inadequate evidence to justify the promotion of an idea into a
theory, I did not deride the idea, for rejection on ignorance is as stupid as
over-credulus acceptance. However, I did get as far as thinning out some
irises in such a manner that the rhizomes grew similarly, before and after
transplanting, in relation to the compass. The results seemed to be better
than those obtained [....] from any other arrrangement which disturbed a
rhizome's developed relationship to the point of the compass. However the
scale of my experiments was too small to produce results that could be really
significant. Then came the war, which prevented their being continued....
[There follows at this point the observation that Gwen Anley's recommendation
that increase be removed fro the mother when quite small and grown on takes
on added significance when one considers that they would then be forced to
adjust quite young to a different orientation, or if potted, to multiple
orientations as the pot was moved about]
In the last few years, however, from different sources, I have been reading
of increasing evidence in support of counting this idea as a worthwhile
theory. For instance, in the September, 1957, issue of Mind and Matter (The
Delawarr Laboratories, Oxford) page 43, appears: "it is thought that plants
growing in the ground grow in a critically orientated postion in relation to
the earth's magnetic axis." Perhaps the day is not far distant when before
digging up an iris clump, one will get a ball-point pen and mark the magnetic
north on each rhizome in the conventional way as is done on a map, so that
they can be re-established with the orientation to which, by their earlier
growth, they have become accustomed."
Anner Whitehead
HIPSource@aol.com
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