Let Plants Teach you About the Birds and the Bees...

Isn't funny how we talk about sex. Seems every parent, marketer, and teenage kid either uses sex as somethign to fear, draw folks in, or as an ultimate goal. Plants are no different.

The challenge for gardeners is getting plants that hold a desired form or trait, and then preserving it through generations of plants until the hybrid first created is established and repeatable. But are hybrids as desireable as heirlooms? Are hybrids stable and true to their form, or are they likely to revert to one genetic parent or another?

The discussion surrounding plants and sex on the forum today is an interesting one. Certainly cuttings produce a clone of a plant, exact in genetic makeup, true to the traits of the plant the cutting was taken from, but seedlings could be a close match to either parent, or a genetic mix of both, and having bought a plant at a garden centre, you really can't be sure what that genetic mix looks like.

In my front yard I have a Diabolo Ninebark (Physocarpus Opulifolius "Diabolo") Which is a lovely shrub, just one problem, its leaves are a stunning gold-yellow colour with a single shoot of the bronze-purple foliage that a Diabolo is known for. Why this mix of colour? Perhapse the shrub was started from a cutting (the true shoot) but seed fell into the pot creating the "other parent's" colouring on the other shoots. As a suckering shrub, its hard to tell. As teh shrub matures I wonder if teh Diabolo coulouring will strengthen or be smothered. I wonder what teh offspring of this shrub will look like.

The reputable garden centre this shrub came from has offered to replace the ninebark, but what is the fun in that? Its more exciting to watch teh plant mature and grow, and to wonder what its offspring will look like, maybe helping the traits of one part of the plant over another. Then again, the shrub may have just been mislabeled on the shelf.

Whether hybrids are to be drawn towards or to rebel against is another whole discussion. Their creation and maintenance is what I find interesting and noteworthy.