Trees, Shrubs and Conifers: Sterile Thugs, 1 by StarhillForest

StarhillForest wrote:
I was talking with an old friend, geneticist Harold Pellet (that's him on the right), this week between our presentations at the Woody Plant Symposium at ChiBot. He is the founder and director of the Landscape Plant Development Center in Minnesota. The organization began about 15 years ago with a mission to breed northern-hardy landscape plants, and actually its original name was something like Center for the Development of Hardy Landscape Plants. One of their achievements is the Northern Lights azalea series.

But they are branching into a new direction. I was delighted to hear him say that they are using transgenic techniques and triploid development to create sterile forms of some of our most common and most aggressively invasive exotic trees! On the list are Acer ginnala, Acer platanoides, and Pyrus spp.!

Someday, if people still insist upon planting thugs like callery pears, perhaps we'll at least be able to offer them trees that have been "spayed"! If you would like to learn more, or join the group (all funding comes from memberships and donations), you can contact Harold via their web site:
http://www.landscapecenter.org

Guy S.