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| PERSONAL BIBLIOGRAPHY REPRODUCTIONS--SEVENTYONE |
CLICK TO RETURN TO PAGE 2 OF LIST OF PAPERS CLICK TO RETURN TO PAGE 1 OF LIST OF PAPERS CLICK TO RETURN TO PAGE 3 OF LIST OF PAPERS 74. A Dissenter's Viewpoint on Hybridization: Desecration of Species, by Jerry Krulik, PUP TALK (Saddleback Valley Bromeliad Society), 18(6), p. 8, June 2011. I feel that in almost all instances, hybridization of plants is WRONG! Why do people do this? Usually because they are not satisfied with the look or cultivatability of natural species. What is the result? An unidentifiable mélange of protoplasmic forms, of no use to science or conservation. Pretty and easily grown, but so are weeds. A good example is the cultivated Pelargonium (Called Geraniums by non-botanists/horticulturists). This has been so extensively crossed and back crossed, over and over, in waves of fashionability for different sized flowers, plants, leaves, etc, that there is no way of identifying the parentage of any of them. This hybridization has only been taking place for about 150 years. They are not species and they just take up space. Consider bromeliad hybridization, most of which is far more recent. You have 2 species, and then you hybridize them. OK, you have a distinct looking set of plants. Then you back cross them, or cross the F1 plants, then repeat with more hybrids or species. Repeat for 100 years with 1000 horticulturists. Remember that especially in the Americas, many putatively selfed plants from cultivation, are actually pollinated cryptically, by hummingbirds, beetles, flies, bees, etc. Now you have thousands of hybrids. Line up 1000 hybrids of some putative parent genus. Can they be told apart? Each intergrades into each other form. And bromeliads have the additional complication that clonal propagation of meristem sports is the rule for many forms, with the clones increasingly selected for certain colors or shapes. The actual habitat in cultivation is an additional confounding variable, giving different leaf colors and lengths even on the same plant. After 100 years (maybe a bit less) all the original hybridizers are dead, their records gone, their collections dead or dispersed thru time and space, and there are no herbarium voucher specimens of the original parents or their crosses. Nothing is even identifiable. To me, this shows that hybridization is a total waste of time and resources. I like natural species. They have been in existence since before mankind began horticulture. If I grow natural species, and propagate them very conservatively—i.e., only by offsets—they can be useful some day, to restore the plant into its original habitat. I am an incurable optimist though. If the plant has become extinct in the wild, it is normally due to habitat loss, only secondarily thru over-collection. It may not be possible, in most cases, to put a bromeliad species back into the wild. Thus the cultivated reservoir of natural labeled species is all we will have left. Likewise, if you really need to grow a species, you always have the option of going back to the original habitat and finding it, seeing what it looks like, comparing it to the herbarium voucher specimens, in short, it should be a permanent entity. Of course, I do grow some hybrids. But they are like unshady relatives, reluctantly acknowledged and tolerated, but not given wholehearted acceptance. For more curmudgeonly articles, see my website at www.aecphotos.com. Below is some relevant information courtesy of Joe Wujcik, who along with Carol Wujcik are co-editors of the SaddleBack Valley PUP TALK |
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