Pilchuck Pollinator

If you do propogate, you will quickly become aware that certain varieties - ‘Lem’s Cameo’, for example – are notoriously difficult to root. You will also be amazed at the success you will have with your first efforts. Neophytes have a high success rate. I attribute this to beginners’ cleanliness and the extra care taken but there is no doubt beginners have chlorophyll in their fingertips. When I first took cuttings of ‘Lem’s Cameo’ twenty years ago, I put in ten cuttings and I got ten plants. Every year since then I have put in ten cuttings of ‘Lem’s Cameo’ and just occasionally get one with roots. The latest ‘must have’ species is pachysanthum. It is very hard to root. I have never been able to do it. Some of the ‘Propagators’ find pachysanthum easy. It’s the same with tsariense. However, just to make sure that you are not the exception to this ‘novice-no-problem’, or ‘tyro’s triumph’ phenomenon, take a few cuttings of an evergreen azalea or ‘Elizabeth’. Now there are those who would say that the world will not necessarily be a better place with another ‘Elizabeth’. However, she is a turn-on, as she is so easily propagated . That initial success is crucial to your continued career as a plant creator.

New plants can also be created from seed. Seed may be obtained from our local society and also from the Seed Exchange of the American Rhododendron Society. You can also be really creative and do some hands-on genetic engineering and make your own hybrid, taking the pollen from the anthers of one flower and putting it on the pistil of another. There is a faction, to which I belong, that thinks that there are too many registered hybrids, and that the world would be a better and certainly simpler place, if more restraint were exercised in registering new names. That does not imply that there should be fewer new plants but only that those enshrined in the Rhododendron Registry be distinctive enough in habit or blossom or hardiness or some other characteristic, to merit inclusion. I once counted 32 registered plants with yakushimanum and ‘Mars’ as parents. No one grows or knows them all but it is doubtful that more than a few are worth having a special moniker. That having been said, I sure would like to have one named for my granddaughter – and there is another grandchild on the way – so you can see that when we do our little bit of rhododendron procreation and want the world to know about it, we should take some pains to make sure we are, in fact, making our world a better place.

Compared to plants like soybean, cotton or wheat, the level of effort going into genetically engineering new varieties of rhododendrons is minute. Some of the latest offerings from some of the big nurseries are genetically engineered. They have had the number of chromosomes in their cells augmented. It is claimed that these plants are tougher, with thicker foliage, longer lasting flowers and are good ‘doers’. This induced polyploidy can now be achieved by the amateur by using a colchicine-like chemical on seedlings. Such increase in chromosomal numbers is very low-tech compared to adding new material to genes – which is the cause of so much concern and debate with GM foodstuffs. Still, isn’t it tempting to think of adding genes from a plant that blooms all the time - Impatiens for example- to our rhododendrons so that we get a longer period of bloom? And I think it would be nice to put in a gene or two to make rhododendrons unwelcoming to the powdery mildew. However, it is at this point that our cautionary alarms should go off. If there are no root weevils are there subsequently no strawberries?

 Once afflicted by the compulsion to create new rhododendrons, the pressure can lure you into questionable practices. I am told that when a truss of ‘Point Defiance’ was first displayed at a show, a pollen thief swiped every grain. There was an outcry. I also recall being with a group on a garden tour and among the group was a well known hybridizer. Going round the garden, I was astonished to see this hybridizer, in a manner that certainly looked subversive, snap a truss from a bush of ‘Phyllis Korn’. I was embarrassed for him when our eyes met. He really did look guilty as sin, but obviously he wanted that pollen. Later, when the subject of polyploidy was being discussed, ‘Phyllis Korn’ was singled out as being a naturally occurring polyploid, having come from open pollinated ‘Gomer Waterer’ seed. The discussor bemoaned the fact that ‘Phyllis Korn’ was totally sterile. The famous hybridizer’s face fell to the floor. He has, however, produced so many good plants that I am sure in the final reckoning he has made the world a better place and his lapse in etiquette has been forgiven.