In the scientific sense a clone is two or more individuals that are genetically identical. Old 'clones', e.g. named apples, are not clones in this sense, each individual will have picked up a variety of mutations over the years that have been propagated on, the new propagules will subsequently also pick up mutations. Of course none of these mutations may have an observable phenotype - so they may all look (and taste) just like the original they were named for - but they are still not a clone of the original. J. On 7/5/2004 5:45:12 PM, Pacific Bulb Society (pbs@lists.ibiblio.org) wrote: > This is one of my favorite topics, and I'm glad that someone else has > raised these questions again. > > I used to receive a catalog from a well-known commercial supplier of fruit > trees. In that catalog, not only was the variation in clonally propagated > material noted, but furthermore the variations were identified (somewhat > confusingly to those of us used to the usual meaning of the term) as > strains. For those of you not into this stuff, the term strain typically > refers to seed propagated material (rather than clonally propagated > material) which varies w