Re: vari. Evansia

>The varigation in plants always stirs some contreverse.
>It has been discovered thru tissue culture that a lot of the plants we all
>saw in both var. & green form were only green and the var. form was a virus.
>tissue culture would remove the virus and the var. could not be cultured.
>A lot of valuble plants lost there value in a hurry.

This may be true for some plants, but certainly not for variegated Hosta,
which are reproduced by the thousands using tissue culture.  My
understanding is that most variegation (of the white/green variety) is a
mutation that affects the development of chloroplasts in parts of the leaf.

I have noted that the variegated Iris japonica tends to revert--some shoots
become all green.  This also happens with Hostas at times.  The theory is
that the disfunctional gene somehow becomes functional again.  Many of the
variegated Hostas are 'sports' or mutants of non-variegated ones, or even
of variegated ones with a different pattern.  If I remember correctly,
Hosta 'Excitation' is an all-yellow mutant of the variegated 'Citation.'

Bill Shear
Department of Biology
Hampden-Sydney College
Hampden-Sydney VA 23943
(804)223-6172
FAX (804)223-6374
email<bills@tiger.hsc.edu>
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