Transposons and Color was Virused Bulbs

...your... note on transposons is exactly the sort of information
I'm looking for. Unfortunately, most of the books I've found in
the library are either totally theoretical, focus on breeding
barley, or are so general that they aren't useful. I'd love to
find a practical, applied guide to
hybridizing ornamentals. If anyone has suggestions, I'm all ears.

Plant genetics is vastly more complicated than what I wrote. My post was really a long
question asking how to account for a very rare red flower in a species with white
flowers. Mendelian genetics explains some flower color schemes, and he did his work in
sweet peas. There are many other ways plants manage their DNA to produce flower color
(or DNA manages the flower color to produce plants, depending on which end of the stick
you are holding.)

Unfortunately the genetics of flower color vary so much from species to species that a
lot of work needs to be done in each species to figure it out. I don't really know much
about it, which is why I asked my question. In the pre-DNA era breeders figured it out
by making thousands of crosses, raising millions of progeny, taking detailed notes of
everything, and thinking long and hard. I suspect in the DNA era it's exactly the same.

Leo Martin
Phoenix Arizona USA

-----Original Message-----
From: pbs-bounces@lists.ibiblio.org [mailto:pbs-bounces@lists.ibiblio.org]
On Behalf Of Leo A. Martin
Sent: Wednesday, April 09, 2014 6:23 PM
To: pbs@lists.ibiblio.org
Subject: [pbs] Transposons and Color was Virused Bulbs

To my understanding, many cultivated flowering plants with colored or white
flowers on different plants reveal simple Mendelian inheritance of pigment production.
That is, the wild type plant has colored flowers, reflecting one
functioning set of color genes on each of the pair of chromosomes governing flower color,
whereas white-flowered plants have two sets of defective pigment production systems.
Having two of the same gene complexes is
referred to as being homozygous and having one normal and one abnormal is referred to as
being heterozygous. So, plants having two functioning complexes would be referred to as
being wild type homozygous, plants with two abnormal complexes would be referred to as
being aberrantly homozygous, and plants with one of each would be heterozygous.

In some cases plants having one chromosome with functioning pigment genes
and one without functioning pigment genes (heterozygous) have the normal flower color,
and in other cases they have paler flowers (think red, white and pink in sweet peas /
Lathyrus
odoratus.)

If two wild-type homozygous plants breed, all their progeny will have normal
flower colors (barring new mutations.) If two aberrantly-homozygous plants and white
flowers breed, all their progeny will have white flowers. If one wild-type homozygous
plant breeds with one homozygous-aberrant plant, all the progeny will be heterozygous,
with one normal gene complex and one abnormal gene complex, and all will have colored
flowers, since all will produce some pigment. But if two of these heterozygous plants
breed, a quarter of their progeny will be wild-type homozygous, a quarter will be
aberrantly homozygous, and half will be heterozygous.

How them to explain flower color in Bombax ellipticum? (Or perhaps
Pseudobombax ellipticum. I haven't read the paper.) This is a tree from
Mexico with a large under- and above-ground storage trunk. For years it was
in Bombacaceae, but a lot of reassortment has been going on, and I think it is now a kind
of cotton. Everybody I know who has been to habitat during bloom season says all the
trees have white flowers. Almost all its American relatives have white flowers. But
there is a form, planted rarely here and there throughout Mexico, always in cultivation,
with red flowers. It can be seen at the four corners of one of the town squares in
Tehuantepec, and in at least one private garden each in Oaxaca city. This
red form does not have the thick bulbous base of the wild type, and it seems to me the
red ones are all cutting-grown. The red form has similar flowers and leaves to the white
form. I know there is a red-flowered tree in Bombacaceae from tropical Asia, but the
Mexican plant does not look to me
like photos I have seen of this species.

How to account for a plant with wild-type white flowers and one instance of
a red sport? Transposons revealing function in an otherwise-silenced red pigment
production gene complex? I don't have the red form so I can't perform crosses to see what
happens. I know a number of people in metro Phoenix with blooming wild-type Bombax
ellipticum.

Leo Martin
Phoenix Arizona USA

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Message: 9
Date: Wed, 9 Apr 2014 23:39:22 -0700
From: "Michael Mace" <michaelcmace@gmail.com>
To: <pbs@lists.ibiblio.org>
Subject: [pbs] 2014 Moraea hybrids
Message-ID: <040c01cf5487$9ca63490$d5f29db0$@gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Hi, gang.

If you don't like hybrids, move on to the next message.

I've written up the 2014 results from my Moraea breeding experiments. This
year I had several new flowers with stripes and spots, the closest thing yet to a red
flower, some interesting pastels, and the usual odd color combinations. You can see
photos here:

http://growingcoolplants.blogspot.com/2014/04/…
l

(I'll be gradually getting this info loaded into the wiki, but I put it up
on my own blog first because it's easier.)

If you haven't heard the background on this project, I've been growing
Moraea species for years, and I'm passionate about preserving them in
cultivation. But after a while you get most of the species that are available, and you no
longer have new things to look forward to each year. So I started trying to create
Moraea hybrids, focusing mostly on the
"peacock" flowers and their relatives (members of the old subgenus
Vieusseuxia). They turned out to be very easy to breed.

I am very much an amateur at this stuff, and would appreciate advice from
the more experienced growers out there (especially info on how colors mix and on breeding
strategy). I'm also happy to correspond with anyone growing Moraeas, and am glad to
share seeds and offsets.

Also, if you know of legitimate sources for the less commonly-offered Moraea
species, please let me know. I have a long list of species I'm still looking for.

Thanks,

Mike

San Jose, CA

Zone 9, min temp 20F (-7C)

------------------------------

Message: 10
Date: Wed, 9 Apr 2014 23:53:55 -0700
From: Karl Church <64kkmjr@gmail.com>
To: Pacific Bulb Society <pbs@lists.ibiblio.org>
Subject: Re: [pbs] 2014 Moraea hybrids
Message-ID:
<CAGquAQiu_oxw=5hSk2tzv=tJSS=Zx27sW6pTBRVrdiN89J2HgQ@mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

Mike,
Tried to view your photos but got a message stating the page doesn't exist.
I would definitely like to see what you've achieved. As a beginner in the
growing of South African bulbs I would appreciate an advise, suggestions on how to grow
them from seed (little or no success so far) & any offsets or seeds you would care to
share. Karl Church
Dinuba CA
On Apr 9, 2014 11:39 PM, "Michael Mace" <michaelcmace@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi, gang.

If you don't like hybrids, move on to the next message.

http://growingcoolplants.blogspot.com/2014/04/…
l

(I'll be gradually getting this info loaded into the wiki, but I put it up
on my own blog first because it's easier.)

If you haven't heard the background on this project, I've been growing
Moraea species for years, and I'm passionate about preserving them in
cultivation. But after a while you get most of the species that are available, and you
no longer have new things to look forward to each year. So I started trying to create
Moraea hybrids, focusing mostly on the
"peacock" flowers and their relatives (members of the old subgenus
Vieusseuxia). They turned out to be very easy to breed.

I am very much an amateur at this stuff, and would appreciate advice from
the more experienced growers out there (especially info on how colors mix and on
breeding strategy). I'm also happy to correspond with anyone growing Moraeas, and am
glad to share seeds and offsets.

Also, if you know of legitimate sources for the less commonly-offered
Moraea
species, please let me know. I have a long list of species I'm still looking for.

Thanks,

Mike

San Jose, CA

Zone 9, min temp 20F (-7C)

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pbs mailing list pbs@lists.ibiblio.org http://pacificbulbsociety.org/list.php
http://pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/

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End of pbs Digest, Vol 135, Issue 13
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