I wanted to add some easy color to the porch for the summer, so I picked up a bag of "Carolyn Wharton" caladium corms and did up some planters. I'm familiar with this very common cultivar, which is supposed to have purplish stems, magenta veins, pink mottling and green leaf edges (as shown in several PlantFiles photos http://davesgarden.com/guides/pf/go/57290/)
I assumed that all caladium cultivars are propagated vegetatively and should be identical but, much to my surprise, only two out of a dozen plants came up true to type! The majority are missing all the magenta. They have the pink mottling, but the veins are green and the stems are brownish. One plant came up with unusually smooth and shiny leaves with a very large magenta center and a few flecks of pink. That one is a particularly attractive plant that could easily be a marketable variety, but it's far from what it was supposed to be.
The scenario I see in my mind is that the producer decided to propagate from seed to increase production and simply selected offspring that were "in the ballpark" to resemble the named cultivar. Is this possible, or is there some other likely explanation?
Aren't caladium cultivars supposed to be clones??
Yes, cultivars need to be vegetatively reproduced.
Were the corms loose or bagged together?
Sorry, I've been away.
The corms were bagged together.
Interesting question. Check out this excerpt while I look up more about if that's a true cultivar or a named seed strain.
"Caladiums can be propagated by seed, tissue culture, or tubers. Seed production of Caladiums requires a long production time and results in seedling variability, therefore it is only used in breeding. Tissue culture is not often used because it is costly. Nearly all Caladium production is done from tubers. In field production by suppliers, tubers are planted in April, harvested November through February, and shipped January first through June "
http://www.ag.auburn.edu/hort/landscape/Caladium.htm
I just sent an email to a wholesale grower to find out how Carolyn Wharton is usually propagated. I'll let you know when I get a response.
I can tell you that if it's done in tissue culture, there is a possibility that cultivars can mutate in flask. This usually happens when a plant is really popular and the microprop facility keeps dividing their "mother stock" without ever resampling from the plant. With each cell division, there is a chance to mutate. To prevent that, tissue culturists will take new meristem tissue from a grown cultivar instead of letting the original stock divide ad infinitum.