And, After All This Time...
Okay, well it hasn't been quite a year since my last, my first, my only (til now, that is) post. I wanted to do great things such as recount the adventures of planting my entire veggie garden in straw bales, an adventure I had in '05. I thought it would be pretty doggone spiffy to relate to those who are just dying to know what to do with the various types of ivy they have, other than planting them in the ground where they can become as invasive as fleas on the rear end of a shaggy stray sheepdog, that they can easily graft them onto Fatshedera, Botanical Wonder Plant, Irish Tree Ivy, or whatever the heck you want to call it. And when you come to think of it, that's pretty much a wonder. Okay, the grafting of ivy onto Fatshedera might not be so STOP THE PRESSES, THAT'S INCREDIBLE, WOWZERS AND GOLLY GEE kinda unheard of. I mean, after all, they are the same genus.. well, at least halfway...uh, sort of. And there all kinds of nuts and fruits of various types grafted onto different rootstocks, different types of trees. And plant breeders are constantly crossbreeding or hybridizing different roses, pansies, fruits and veggies and such to come up with bigger, juicier, tastier, prettier, more vigorous, longer-lasting and all kinds of other better and newer varieties of everything we plant freaks and semi-normal gardeners just love to have.
So, crossbreeding different cultivars within the same species is everyday, happens all the time in gardens without any effort on the part of the gardener or the plants kind of normal. And hybridizing different species within the same genus is not so novel, either. I mean look at pluots and apriums. They're both hybrids or crossbreeds of plums and apricots. Why aren't they called the same thing since they both have the same parents? Well, look at people. If Mr Smith and Miss Jones marry, they don't have a bunch of little Joneses. They have a bunch of little Smiths. Or sometimes they have a few little Jones-Smiths or versi- vicey. Same thing in the plant world. The difference between apriums and pluots is whether the plum or the apricot was the father and which was the mother. And yes, like animals there are both male and female plants which reproduce sexually like animals do. Okay, maybe not quite the same but sexual nonetheless. Like my pistachio trees. I have one of each; male and female, that is. Of course, there are plenty of hermaphrodites like squash and corn which have some female and some male flowers and plants like the rose which has perfect flowers; both male and female parts on the same flower. But unlike people, there are no other plants making bad jokes or nasty judgements about differing sexual characteristics in the plant world. Otherwise the similarities between the Plant Kindom and the Animal Kingdom are truly amazing. Just look at some of my old bosses; not quite vegetables but very close.
Now, why is Fatshedera such a botanical wonder, you say? Well, although species hybridization is not so rare, hybridization on the genus level is almost unheard of. When I pull out my garden book and look up plants, they are listed by genus, followed by species, and sometimes cultivar. So if I want to look up ivy of some type, except for grape ivy or ground ivy, I go to the genus Hedera, the genus being the capitalized part of the name. After giving the general characteristics, it is then broken down by the species within the genus. Such as the old standard English ivy which is Hedera helix and Persian ivy which is Hedera colchica. Now if we hybridized these two, which wouldn't be unheard of since they are both in the same genus, the resulting plant would be called Hedera followed by whatever the breeder decided to call the resulting new species. Let's say the new hybrid had sharply toothed leaves. It would then likely be named Hedera dentifolia, dentifolia being latin for toothed leaves.
But, (and it's a real biggie, folks) when a plant in the genus Hedera somehow manages to hybridize with a plant from the genus Fatsia, as in Fatsia japonica, as happened way back in 1910 somewhere in a greenhouse somewhere in France, it is HUGE! Normally the genus name remains the same and a new species name is made for new plants. In this case, a new genus was created and was named by combining the two genera in name; Fatshedera, as they had been combined in fact. Now, what I call a wonder, in addition to the fact that I just recently heard of Fatshedera for the first time quite recently, is that I can't seem to locate any at my local nurseries. Okay, two wonders. The only other such stupendous happening that comes to mind in this vein is when a couple of wild cereal grasses (I believe they were) somehow managed to hybridize in the wild and the resulting hybrid later happened to cross with a goat grass (I think). The resulting hybrid of this second almost miraculous unassisted by humans hybridization was a new grain that literally changed the world: wheat.
I certainly don't expect to create anything with a mere half percent of similar impact but I would like to share things like banana peels for aphid control and milk for black spot and rust on roses. Do they work and if so how well? And now that I've managed to get through the long winter I'm terribly busy trying to catch up on all the pruning and such I SHOULD have done during that long winter. Now that I have a heavy case of spring fever (THE DOGWOODS ARE BLOOMING!!!) I'm keeping my arms in constant pain from squeezing and pulling the shears, loppers and saw. And all the many gardening jobs of spring are kind of like this little article; I start with this and, in order to get this done I have to do that first, which leads to this and I finally end up doing seventeen other things and still haven't been able to do what I set out to do because I still need to get this out of the way first and in order to do this I have to do that and in order to.......
I just found that the above post was in the draft section. I was quite upset last April to find that it had just disappeared instead of showing up on the blog. So after a quick review, here it is...only seven months later than I thought.
So, crossbreeding different cultivars within the same species is everyday, happens all the time in gardens without any effort on the part of the gardener or the plants kind of normal. And hybridizing different species within the same genus is not so novel, either. I mean look at pluots and apriums. They're both hybrids or crossbreeds of plums and apricots. Why aren't they called the same thing since they both have the same parents? Well, look at people. If Mr Smith and Miss Jones marry, they don't have a bunch of little Joneses. They have a bunch of little Smiths. Or sometimes they have a few little Jones-Smiths or versi- vicey. Same thing in the plant world. The difference between apriums and pluots is whether the plum or the apricot was the father and which was the mother. And yes, like animals there are both male and female plants which reproduce sexually like animals do. Okay, maybe not quite the same but sexual nonetheless. Like my pistachio trees. I have one of each; male and female, that is. Of course, there are plenty of hermaphrodites like squash and corn which have some female and some male flowers and plants like the rose which has perfect flowers; both male and female parts on the same flower. But unlike people, there are no other plants making bad jokes or nasty judgements about differing sexual characteristics in the plant world. Otherwise the similarities between the Plant Kindom and the Animal Kingdom are truly amazing. Just look at some of my old bosses; not quite vegetables but very close.
Now, why is Fatshedera such a botanical wonder, you say? Well, although species hybridization is not so rare, hybridization on the genus level is almost unheard of. When I pull out my garden book and look up plants, they are listed by genus, followed by species, and sometimes cultivar. So if I want to look up ivy of some type, except for grape ivy or ground ivy, I go to the genus Hedera, the genus being the capitalized part of the name. After giving the general characteristics, it is then broken down by the species within the genus. Such as the old standard English ivy which is Hedera helix and Persian ivy which is Hedera colchica. Now if we hybridized these two, which wouldn't be unheard of since they are both in the same genus, the resulting plant would be called Hedera followed by whatever the breeder decided to call the resulting new species. Let's say the new hybrid had sharply toothed leaves. It would then likely be named Hedera dentifolia, dentifolia being latin for toothed leaves.
But, (and it's a real biggie, folks) when a plant in the genus Hedera somehow manages to hybridize with a plant from the genus Fatsia, as in Fatsia japonica, as happened way back in 1910 somewhere in a greenhouse somewhere in France, it is HUGE! Normally the genus name remains the same and a new species name is made for new plants. In this case, a new genus was created and was named by combining the two genera in name; Fatshedera, as they had been combined in fact. Now, what I call a wonder, in addition to the fact that I just recently heard of Fatshedera for the first time quite recently, is that I can't seem to locate any at my local nurseries. Okay, two wonders. The only other such stupendous happening that comes to mind in this vein is when a couple of wild cereal grasses (I believe they were) somehow managed to hybridize in the wild and the resulting hybrid later happened to cross with a goat grass (I think). The resulting hybrid of this second almost miraculous unassisted by humans hybridization was a new grain that literally changed the world: wheat.
I certainly don't expect to create anything with a mere half percent of similar impact but I would like to share things like banana peels for aphid control and milk for black spot and rust on roses. Do they work and if so how well? And now that I've managed to get through the long winter I'm terribly busy trying to catch up on all the pruning and such I SHOULD have done during that long winter. Now that I have a heavy case of spring fever (THE DOGWOODS ARE BLOOMING!!!) I'm keeping my arms in constant pain from squeezing and pulling the shears, loppers and saw. And all the many gardening jobs of spring are kind of like this little article; I start with this and, in order to get this done I have to do that first, which leads to this and I finally end up doing seventeen other things and still haven't been able to do what I set out to do because I still need to get this out of the way first and in order to do this I have to do that and in order to.......
I just found that the above post was in the draft section. I was quite upset last April to find that it had just disappeared instead of showing up on the blog. So after a quick review, here it is...only seven months later than I thought.
posted by gardenin' guy | 11:00 PM
2 Comments:
Okay, so it was March instead of April when I lost this entry. That makes it eight months later than I thought. Sorry.
Ooh. By the way. The date that this post actually went up was November, 26, 2007.
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