Re: CULT: Pale leaves on Setosa

From: Daryl/Kathy Haggstrom <hagg@alaska.net>

Shanna DeSotle wrote:
> I don't want to be interpretted as tolerant of  a deficient plant, but rather
> as inquisitivew about why the plant is growing poorly.  Perhaps it is a strain
> of the species that is adjusted to growing in a pH that is different from the
> rest. 
>     The way I see it, many of Kathy's plants are selected directly from the
> wild and they have to grow well enough to survive there. If something grew
well
> in its native habitat, but seems to grow poorly in her garden, assumedly of a
> similar climate, my question is then what is the difference.  I guess I just
> see the situation to be different than a TB or siberian that is 10-20
> generations from the species but seems to be the one that got the bad genes.
> my point lies more in that it does no harm to find out why
> something acts the way it does.  If she was to sew the seed and grow all the
> seedlings up to about four inches tall, hypothetically, and half looked more
> yellow than the rest, she will have learned something about that trait at
> least, regardless of whether they get rowed out or thrown out.
>     I don't give up so easy sometimes, since I have had a plant that survived
> but didn't do well, and it gets put elswhere and it takes off.  I can't say
the
> reason it looked bad was 100% my fault, because environment had something to
do
> with it.

Andrew -

I definitely didn't interpret your caution against discarding a plant as
tolerant of deficiencies. Mark was basing his comment on my assumption
that it was indeed a deficient plant, and encouraged me to not introduce
weaknesses into my ground floor gene pool, which is very much the way I
feel, and I'm glad he agreed with that attitude. I would rather remove
all possibility of contamination at this point, which is what I did...
BUT the minute I read your comment about saving seed from the plant
itself and growing that as a test, I knew that was good advice, which is
why I'm kicking myself. I am still comfortable about destroying the seed
pods of all surrounding plants.

I have been thinking about your comments, and came up with several
things I want to check out before I respond more fully. One is actually
something you brought up today in your e-mail which is: this was a
collected plant from the wild. Why should it suddenly start acting
poorly under cultivation? Possibility: one of my more annoying problems
with collected plants has been that the plant I collect may actually be
TWO separate plants. I usually spot these, but it can be VERY difficult
to tell sometimes until they bloom. In certain areas in the wild the
iris are so thick that nearly every fan is a different plant, but I have
to tolerate this to get a healthy size rhizome/root clump of the one I
select. There is actually a possibility that this one may be a separate
seedling that came with my selected one. I vaguely recall last spring
that this clump seemed to have a bit of problem with pale leaves (it is
a whitish/yellow color).

BUT where in the world is the original plant? There were at least two
green fans last year. One possibility is vole damage. Voles camped on
one other clump last winter, and ate the entire rhizome by spring. They
may have eaten the original plant and for some odd reason disliked the
pale plant's rhizome, which would be intriguing. I'll be flying to the
homestead in a bit and will check these ideas out. I'll probably be back
in town near a computer early next week and let you know.

Don't worry that I misinterpreted your reasoning - I welcome the
suggestions. That is one of the strengths of this list. A multitude of
counselors puts forth possibilities that one person alone wouldn't think
of. 

Kathy Haggstrom
Anchorage, Alaska (zone 3)
mail to:hagg@alaska.net


------------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe from this mailing list, or to change your subscription
to digest, go to the ONElist web site, at http://www.onelist.com and
select the User Center link from the menu bar on the left.
Other Mailing lists | Author Index | Date Index | Subject Index | Thread Index