The plant breeder is truly a creator, for he works, not with such dead chemicals as pigments, but with those infinitesimally small yet living chemicals galled “genes.”
Genes: Bearers Of Heredity In Plants
Genes are the bearers of heredity in all life, from mankind to the grass itself.
It is hard for us to realize that a tiny bit of matter, perhaps only a molecule or 2, repeating itself in every cell of the body, can find its work cut out for it in one place only.
It can determine that a woman has brown eyes, a lilac fragrance that takes us back to youth, or yellow tulip petals.
New Combinations Of Plants
So it is, and when genes are brought together in new combinations, new forms of life result.
Who can say that anything is impossible in the complexity of life?
Often there is no way to reach toward a new synthetic form of life, for the new must come out of the old, just as tomorrow comes out of today.
However, if a man had the power to reach out into the more remote realms of possibility, displaying skill in chemistry that we are just beginning to touch today, could he not create a griffin, or a unicorn, or a fairy – or a blue rose?
Plant Breeding
It is because men do not know exactly where the bounds of possibility lie that those of us who are bitten by the “bug” of plant breeding are led on and on, transforming plant and animal life as we go.
It is difficult to imagine a personality richer than the plant breeder’s unless it is the poet’s personality.
Homer must have had a lot of fun dreaming visions of Helen and Hector and portraying Odysseus coming out of the sea, dreaming these visions with such vividness that they will probably live in the imaginations of men as long as the race lasts.
Plant Breeder: Immortal
The plant breeder is likewise immortal: that is, his work is. The plant breeder dreams of syntheses that may be, and when he has made them actual, men cultivate them.
It is true that wide varieties of plants are forgotten, as they are superseded by better ones, but we may be sure that they will live on in their descendants, as Marquis wheat lives on within dozens of newer kinds of wheat.
Thus, a plant breeder who achieves something of value is assured that his synthesis will never be undone.
F. L. Skinner of Dropmore, Manitoba, born a native of Aberdeen, Scotland, and brought to the northern limits of settlement of that Canadian province in childhood, was “bitten” by the bug of plant breeding.
Hybridization Of Lilac
A lifetime spent in the study of plants, in collecting species and their hybrids from far and near, and in hybridization and selection.
It has enriched the gardens and orchards of all lovers of beauty who live in the north temperate zone, particularly those in the extreme North.
For example, lilac is one of the most treasured ornamental shrubs and has received as much attention from Dr. F. L. Skinner as the rose.
He was the first person in prairie Canada to bring home the Korean lilacs, gifts of the famous Prof. Sargent of the Arnold Arboretum, following a visit in 1918.
“Among the other treasures I brought back with me were some one-year-old seedlings of two lilacs grown from seed collected on the Diamond mountains of Korea by E. H. Wilson in. 1917.
These lilacs, Syringa velutina and Syringa oblata dada, have proved absolutely hardy at Dropmore; therefore, in 1921, I crossed some French lilacs, which are occasionally severely injured by our Winters, with Syringa oblata dilitata.
A new race of ‘American’ lilacs resulted, which seems better suited to our continental climate than the European varieties of the common lilac.
These new lilacs have several interesting features. Many of them have bronze leaves in the Spring and turn a deep purple in the Autumn.
They do not sucker to the same extent as do the older lilacs (in fact, a hedge of the first hybrids raised in 1922 has not suckered yet), and they are extremely free-flowering and fragrant.
In some of my later crosses, these lilacs compare well with Lemoine’s varieties.”
Varieties Of Lilacs
Eight varieties of these lilacs have received acclaim. They are:
- Assessippi
- Churchill
- Evangeline
- Excel
- Fraser
- Laurentian
- Nokomis
- Pocahontas
These vary in their tone of lilac, from Churchill, which is “pale pinkish mauve,” to Assessippi, which is Argyle purple, and Pocahontas, which is dark purple.
Between come Excel, which is mauve pink, and Laurentian, a bluish tint of fair intensity.
Double Lilac: Evangeline
Evangeline alone is double, a deep lilac. Single lilacs, of course, make a better display from a distance than double ones, but double lilacs are nevertheless in demand.
Every lilac garden should be provided with both.
Speaking for myself, the feature of no suckering, or relatively slow suckering, seems one of the most important features possible to breed into a lilac.
Especially for a lilac that is meant to be useful in any area where own-root plants are better than grafted plants.
Lilac: Northerly Genus
This, perhaps, is the entire area where the lilac, a northerly genus, is most highly adapted.
Certainly, there is no really congenial understock for lilac plants to be grown in the far North.
Sterculia Varieties
Sterculia villosa is hardy and non-suckering but not sufficiently congenial.
It may be that Sterculia oblata dilitata will prove to be the ideal understock for French lilacs, but this is yet to be demonstrated.
In the meantime, to make available new varieties that do not sucker when on their own roots is to do us a favor of vast importance.
Only those who have wrestled with lilac suckers for years know what a Herculean task they make inevitable and how, if allowed to develop, they inhibit the blooming of the lilac shrub.
Fragrance: Important to Lilacs
Fragrance, too, is of extreme importance in the lilac, second only to the size and quality of the flower. Around fragrance cluster man’s most poignant memories.
It is necessary to repeat that the detailed description of these “American” lilacs is meant only as a sample of one niche a modern plant breeder opened up.
Hybridization Between Different Species
When a hybridization between different species is once effected, the gate has been swung open.
Henceforth, anyone can obtain interesting results merely by sowing open-pollinated seeds and growing the seedlings to flowering.
As has long been recognized by geneticists, some of the most interesting and valuable new syntheses of ancient genera occur, not in the first generation of a cross but second and subsequent generations.
It seems hard to believe, for instance, that any lover of lilacs could read off a lilac like Pocahontas without wishing to raise and flower seedlings of it.
Obtaining New Lilacs
To feel the urge particularly strongly if it could be isolated near one of two of the finest of the recent French varieties and to obtain new lilacs ¾ Vulgaris and only ¼ Korean.
If one of these could be found that would retain the freedom of suckering of the Korean parent, it would be an acquisition. Very much the same situation exists in other fields of plant breeding work.
Much has been done, but much remains to do, both in importing new species and thereby intermingling new genes with those that have served us so long and developing further segregations in the recently created hybrid lines.
Tasks Of A Specialist Hybridizer
The first task is one for the specialist. The fact that private plant breeders such as F. L. Skinner have undertaken such work and have succeeded with it does not imply that they are not specialists.
The second task is one that every amateur gardener can take apart, without any special skills, except to see where the most valuable segregations are likely to occur.
The judgment to select only the valuable among those which do occur. The latter is a rarer skill than one would think.
The pleasure of plant breeding is not only representative of the pleasure of gardening throughout, for all gardening is creative, but it is also the most intense department of it because it is the most creative.
Plant Breeding: Not A Mysterious Rite
Plant breeding is not a mysterious rite but simple is its principles.
It is not something for several generations to tackle (except, of course, in certain plants which are slow to attain their maturity).
Still, it can begin to yield results after one has given it only a little attention.
The gardener is the man for whom the plant breeder works, and he has his pride, too.
Ornamental gardening, whether it consists of the care and nurture of trees, shrubs, or flowers, shares a good deal of the creativeness found in breeding, and breeding is an art and a skill.
44659 by Percy H. Wright