Why I breed plants

You, gentle reader, may not know this, but while I am a passionate gardener, I am an wildly obsessive plant breeder.

I realize most people, even most gardeners, aren't plant breeders -- they've never made a single cross or selection. It is almost mind-boggling to me. I know other people are different but how, how possibly could so many people overlook THE MOST FUN THING about gardening?

So I've been thinking about how to communicate how thrilling it is.

Here are a couple images:

At the top of each picture are two species of petunia, and below them are some of their grandchildren (More technically, F2 hybrids. For more detail, see this.) I don't even LIKE petunias but these pictures make my heart skip a beat. All those flowers below are the secret, hidden flowers just waiting to be discovered. New combinations of color, shape, fragrance, and size.  Take two plants, dab a little pollen, save some seeds, and out comes a wild kalodoscope of new flowers.

Take two tomatoes, (in this case, Matt's Wild Cherry and Black Krim) and here is the flurry of sizes and colors that came out:

And they all taste different! Sweetness, tartness, savoryness, and all the 300+ flavor compounds that make a tomato shaken up into essentially endless variation. Tasting my way through this hybrid population is a thrilling exploration: Some are okay, some vile, some -- a rush of excitment here -- are simply delicious.

To me, plant breeding is the prefect combination of creativity and discovery -- the two most exciting things in the world. I start with an idea (Wouldn't this tomato taste good if it were a bit sweeter? Or this if it were more savory and complex?). The goal in mind, I start making crosses to try and create it. But, instead of merely succeeding or failing in my quest to create, each step of plant breeding throws open a whole new world to explore! Looking, tasting, and sniffing as I go, I feel like Columbus stepping into a new world surprised and delighted by what I find. When I find what I want, the rush of discovery is combined with that other great rush, the euphoric sense of "I made this. It existed only in my mind, and now it exists, for the first time, in the world!"

I know everyone is different -- and for most people, this is no more appealing than playing baseball is to me (I mean, really? Standing around watching people try to hit balls with sticks?) But if what I describe sounds appealing, go ahead and give it a try. It isn't hard, and life will in the garden will never be the same again. You can even get started letting bees do most of the work as I describe for violas or columbines, or dive right into the slightly more complex, but marvelously delicious joys of tomato breeding!

New annuals headed your way

I'm going to have a series of posts about what I saw during my recent trip to the California Spring (aka pack) trials. The focus of the trials is annuals, so today is a run down of the ones that caught my eye. I'll follow up with perennials, with some more general thoughts on the State of Plant Breeding Today, and What I Thought of California to come.

For lovers of black plants, Ball has a new black petunia (shown here in a mixed basket with calebrachoa):

I'm not a huge petunia fan (despite the fact I work with them) but I couldn't resist taking a picture of this petunia 'Cappuchino' from Dummen. Such an unusual color!

Nemesia seems to be a rising trend, we saw TONS of them. My favorite was this 'Metallic Blue' I think nemesia are lovely, but they've never performed well for me. It will be interesting to see if some of this glut of new varieties hold up better to the heat.

Cuphea seem to be moving into the mainstream. Several companies had new cupheas with HUGE flowers. Not sure how much I like them, but they are a nice change from the endless petunias and geraniums.

Another trend I am very happy about are the regal-type Pelargoniums (aka, geraniums). Regals are spectacularly beautiful with huge, bicolored flowers, but are notorious picky and hate heat. Many companies we visited had new series of regals they claimed were more heat tolerant and better performers. I hope they are right. I'd LOVE to see these types replace the boring old zonals.

I'm not much for standard cushion mums, but I really liked these mums: Just a few flowers on each plant, but each on the size of my hand! I really hope these catch on.

Where double flowers come from

Every wondered how plant breeders get from single flowers like this:

To big doubles full of petals like this?

(photo from jungle seeds)

Well, it starts with flowers like this:

Look closely (click on the image to expand it) in the center of each flower, and you can see little tiny specks of extra petals -- they're actually called "petaloids"

Here is what they look like carefully pulled out of each flower: (I highly recommend clicking on the photo to see them much larger)

At far right is a normal stamen -- the male part of the flower that produces pollen. The others are in various stages of conversion into petals. Keep going with this, and you get the full, frilly, double flowers you see in the second pictures. It only takes a very small change in the expression of a single gene to switch an anther to a petal -- so double versions of flowers pop up randomly all the time in nature due to random mutations, or in the genetic confusion of hybrids between species (which is what lead to the petaloids in these pictures). In the wild, of course, double flowers die out because they are usually virtually sterile -- and even when they aren't how is a bee supposed to get in there and pollinate them? But in the garden, we treasure them and keep them alive -- so much so that many people don't even realize that the classic rose:

Is a double version of a very simple flower with only five petals like this:

 

More about petunias

My petunias got a fair amount of comment when I posted a quick snapshot of the greenhouse full of them on bloom day, so I decided to scan, Ellis Hollow-style, some of the flowers so you can see more of what they look like.

First, at top left we have Petunia integrifolia (small, magenta, no scent) and at top right P. axillaris (large, white, extremely fragrant). Below are a selection of some of their grandchildren (aka: F2 generation) many of which are fragrant though are not. This is actually the hybrid that started it all back in the 1800s -- modern petunias are derived from the hybridization of these two species, with a lot more colors added, and most of the fragrance lost.

Next: At top left P. exserta (red, unscented), and at top right, P. axillaris again and below them, their grandchildren. P. exserta is a cool species because it is the only red, hummingbird pollinated petunia -- and it is nearly extinct. It was only discovered recently, and is only known in the wild in one tiny population of only about a dozen plants. Luckily, seeds have been collected and distributed, so these unique petunia can be preserved in greenhouses and gardens around the world. I like the clear pink colors of this hybrids a lot better than the magenta tones of the first... sadly, only a very few of them are scented.

By the way: If you are intrigued by these wild petunias, they are super easy to grow -- Select Seeds offers seeds of both P. axillaris and P. integrifolia. As far as I know, P. exserta is not commercially available, but if you want some, shoot me an e-mail (engeizuki at gmail dot com) and I can send you some. (UPDATE 7/6/2011: I am out of seed to share with people, however, I did send some seed to Annie's Annuals, and you can buy plants from.) It is an easy, self-sowing annual for me, and the hummingbirds love it.
And, if you are intrigued by the hybrids you can create them as well! It is SUPER easy: Step one: Take P. axillaris flower. Step two: Shove it into a P. integrifolia flower. Step three: harvest your hybrid seeds. Then you get the fun of growing up all the different types and picking your favorites to save seed from for next year, creating your own, unique strain of petunias.