GARDEN FANATIC: Horticultural sports

Catharine asked. Well, sorta, I replied. It’s a sport, a spontaneous and random mutation that occurs on an established variety. Sports resemble their parent, but often have radically different flowers and/or growth habits.

Plant hybridizers examine thousands of wild and cultivated species yearly in search of variations or “off-types” of a given plant. In a bed of seedlings, just one out of 10,000 may have a distinctive new characteristic — blue flower instead of white, yellow leaves rather than green, wavy flower petals, dramatic change in leaf or flower shape, an increased flowering period, greater disease resistance and so on. By saving and cultivating the characteristic(s), a new variety comes into being.

A mutation may occur within every type of plant trait. Size, color, flavor, yield and odor are just a few examples. Their appearance is totally unpredictable.

Although a sport occurs more commonly among seedlings, there are many examples of bud mutations, variations in which a part of the plant, such as a branch, differs noticeably from the parent plant.

The starking sport of the delicious apple is a spurred variety that mutated and provides an earlier and richer red coloring of the fruit. It first appeared as a branch of an ordinary delicious tree. New varieties of camellias have been propagated from branches that displayed color or form mutations. Similar flower-color bud sports often occur on dahlias, chrysanthemums and azaleas.

The new dawn rose is another interesting bud sport. The June-flowering Dr. van Fleet climbing rose produced a branch which flowers almost continuously through the summer and fall. Cuttings from this sport became the variety new dawn.

Roses sport in different ways. Changes in petal color are relatively common in an uncommon occurrence, as in our example of the white Winchester Cathedral sporting from its pink parent.

Other examples include change from a bush to a climbing habit, change in the number of petals and development of moss on flower stems.

Mutants have been experimentally produced through the use of radiation, changes in temperature, aging of seed and the use of colchicine. Some of these forced mutations yield new changes, while others are similar to those that occur naturally, and often more rapidly.

I am sharing a birthday week with my sweet Catharine. Happy Birthday, darling! By the way, I finally figured out why you call me a good sport.

See you next time.

STEVE KAWARATANI is happily married to award-winning writer Catharine Cooper and has two cats and five dogs. He can be reached at (949) 497-8168, or e-mail to plantman2@mac.com.