I was looking through Brent and Becky's Bulb catalogue and it said the EE's were tissue cultured. Are these as good as the others?
Question about tissue cultured EE's
Tissue culture is the asexual propagation of fragments of a suitable parent plant in order to produce clones of it in large quantity. A clone is a genetically identical descendant of a single plant. A tissue cultured plant is grown in a laboratory "stew" of tissue collected from the parent and not from seed.
In the process of tissue culture, cells are grown in nutrient solutions in a laboratory until they form a mass of tissue. These then are given different chemicals to induce roots and leaves. Once developed these tiny plants are transplanted into a potting medium and those from a commercial lab are normally distributed to the commercial plant growing industry in trays of tiny plants to be grown to a salable size.
Almost every plant you buy at a commercial grower, Walmart, Kmart or any other source are tissue cultured plants unless you go to a long time grower that is willing to take the time to take cuttings or seeds of established plants sometimes taken from the wild and grown for commercial sale. This is not often done any longer since it is a much slower way to produce plants for sale and is not as profitable as the tissue culture method. Instead of paying $4 you are more likely to pay $40 or more.
There are a few growers in South Florida and other locations that do grow only from seed taken from a natural plant but the price is normally substantially higher than a TC plant. Often, serious collectors that want to know the exact origin of their plant will buy only from a grower that will take the time do do the process naturally since tissue culture can cause either the leaves or the inflorescences to sometimes be malformed. Tissue cultured plants sometimes do not grow as fast or as large as a naturally produced plant but in time you can often not tell the difference. It is just matter of personal preference.
Personally, I don't buy tissue cultured plants but that is just my preference since I like to know where my plants originate in nature. For the average grower that just loves the beauty of a plant there is no substantial difference.
Steve
www.ExoticRainforest.com
This message was edited May 22, 2010 12:10 PM
Ok thanks a bunch.
I've never had any trouble growing them, angedawn47. Even ones that start off as 2" plants in May are huge by the end of summer.
I have found that the quality of TC plants has a lot to do with the lab that is producing them. Some labs are able to produce a high quality plant that is true to type, while others whose technique and/or protocol is not so tight will have plants showing up with deformities or other problems. The lab I am using (not in the USA) does an excellent job and they also do it quickly when compared to other, more well known, labs.
Thanks for the info.