Tissue Culture Plants

Central Florida Farms - Rare Tropicals and Palms, Tissue Culture Information, Alocasia Borneo Giant, Colocasia, Giant Elephant Ears

A thought about Tissue Culture Plants

Alocasia Borneo Giant - Grows HUGE! second largest undivided leafed plant!

Alocasia Brancifolia - Photo Borrowed ŠDavid Scherberich

ŠDavid Mattocks - Peach Butterfly Gingers

Alocasia lauterbachianna - Alocasia Sword! - Photo Borrowed ŠDavid Scherberich

Xanthosoma Albo Atrovirens Š2004 David Mattocks

Tissue culture is a process of cloning plants in a sterile environment with just small piece of the main energy portion of the plant called the apical meristem. It is planted in a special medium and grown in sterilized containers where the plantlets can form, grow and be multiplied (from one plant heart) up to 5000 without severe or adverse mutations. Some mutations can occur the higher the number of created plants from the same specimen. Those plants are carefully watched by the growers for stability and possibly a new strain of plant or discarded as non-useable. This process can take up to a year to produce a stable and viable group of plants. Tissue culture was first successfully endeavored in the 70's primarily to protect endangered and rare plants from extinction. Since then it has somewhat been perfected on most types of plants and others that were once thought to be unable to be tissue cultured are being perfected as well. I suspect that one day the science behind this process will be able to tissue culture just about any plant that is brought into the lab with trial and error efforts. There are a few plants that have not (to date) been able to be tissue cultured with any stable success. The Ae-Ae Variegated banana is one example of this as are some other naturally true variegated sports of Aroids and other plants. I am not sure about palms yet, but I have heard talk of the process. This is good and bad. It is good in a way to keep certain plants rare (making them more appreciated). This is only my opinion mixed with a strong thought... at the same time mass production of a once rare plant or maybe a plant that is not near extinction yet is difficult to propagate becomes as widely available as impatiens at wal-mart makes a plant much more 'disposable' to some.

I believe the importance of tissue culture is to preserve very rare plants that are needed, or near extinction or that can be mass produced for medicinal reasons for the betterment of the world at large. Secondarily, it is extremely useful in designing strains of plants that are more tolerant to world wide spreading diseases from the worldwide importation/deportation from country to country.

Please read this article I am writing about the severity and importance of some type of regulations on importation of wood and all cargo into the United States, especially from countries or lands that are known to host serious vectors that can literally wipe out and destroy our natural forests. And the fact that they come from a sterile environment, makes it that much easier to care for as young plantlets and too tiny for sale. Keep those pests OUT of our garden!

The thought that if there is a rare plant nearing extinction and it is not able to be saved via tissue culturing or other means of rapid sterile propagation. If some rare plant becomes discovered and is useful as a cure to some (to date) incurable disease and it is not able to be tissue cultured or propagated in a lab and a natural disease wipes that particular species out, well you know the conclusion.

The good side to mass propagation is that now everyone can afford to have some of those plants that were once very expensive, very rare and only seen by photos in books and or in a collector's greenhouse that had traveled the world (or knew someone that did) to obtain these plants. There are still many areas of rain forest floors and tree-top located plants that have not yet been seen or fully tested for their potential for modern medicine. The tissue culture of one plant that could save the lives of millions of the avian flu, AIDS, muscular dystrophy (and the list goes on and on) is a priceless capability and I am thankful for whole lab process. More plants are currently being found throughout the world in rainforests and secret parts of the world less traveled. That would be a job that I only WISH I was able to do. Maybe one day I'll be blessed with that journey.

Another great thing about tissue culture is that if there is a popular hybrid species from cross pollination human efforts or plants pollinated by accident that refuses to produce viable seeds, the tissue culturing is that perfect way around the hybrid end to that new species. It is also make reproduction much faster. Alocasia x Calidora (A. Gagaena x A. Odora) is one example of that. I have no idea how that happened to produce such a large and beautiful plant since the Alocasia Gagaena is smaller than the Alocasia Odora but the hybrid can grow larger than an Alocasia Macrorrhiza! Hats off to the author of that hybrid! You can read about that success here:

There are more and more plants being T. cultured every year and every couple years a newly discovered plant or two is found either wild collected, unsuspected lab mutations or even a sport from a natural plant that remained stable. Some plants are difficult to get a good crop with tissue culture and crop failure is still a high factor with certain plants. The tissue culture companies get very aggravated (to say the least) when they have a plant in high demand that is constantly having crop failure or becomes contaminated. Some companies have given up on a few varieties while others persist in perfecting that particular method to yield a stable strong crop. The nursery industry folks are also disappointed in the crop failure and their inventory is that plant short.

In my website descriptions when I make it clear that a plant is not tissue cultured it is because I want the consumer to know that they are naturally propagated either by seed or offset (pup, sucker or sport) from the mother plant. A natural propagation is always a better plant (in my personal opinion) due to the fact that you never know what mutation (beautiful, unusual or ugly) may occur if any at all. In tissue culture, it's a clone of the main plant and that is what you will get 99% of the time. There are chances of stable tissue cultured mutations that are now readily available to the industry at the present time. But the purpose of tissue culture is achieve a perfect clone of the original specimen and this is usually the case (if all goes as planned that is). Also the very young tissue culture plants have a higher chance of death until they reach a certain size and a naturally propagated plant usually has a much higher rate of survival with faster growth (vigor), viability and slightly earlier maturity. This is as a rule, but isn't always the case in every plant. Most of the time the consumer has nothing to worry about with tissue cultured plants since they are sold at the safe stage of the plant's life to nurseries and the nurserymen are left to raise them past the crucial stage of their lives. Sometimes if a plant is slow to sell from the TC company, it will arrive to the nursery in better than great shape and everyone is a happy camper. Believe me, I am not knocking tissue culturing process or any TC companies in the least. Many of the bananas and tropicals we sell are from tissue culture & from a reputable company located here in central Florida unless otherwise stated. The owner of this company is adamant on doing a job well done (and lives up to those standards) by not even releasing plants to the industry if all isn't just right with the batch. They are also properly named and I have never had an order mislabeled or even have any die for that matter after receiving them. So when we get them, we know they are as quality as one can obtain. They are sterile, free from disease and pests, and are usually ready to grow extremely fast for the consumer and me. But if there is a choice between an offset, seed grown or tissue culture plant, I would always choose the tissue culture last. That's just my personal preference. Some plants can only be obtained by tissue culture unless you travel to the country of origin and fight the 'red tape', mosquitoes and venomous snakes to get that one plant that might be hiding behind a larger leaf or behind tree.

So there isn't anything wrong in the least with tissue culturing plants and I hope that I haven't discouraged anyone from ordering a tissue cultured plant from here or anywhere or given anyone the wrong impression about tissue cultured plants in my descriptions. I apologize if I have given the wrong impression or a negative attitude towards the process. Naturally propagated plants are usually a bit hardier and faster growing (especially in aroids and bananas) off the line and is why I emphasize when a plant we have for sale is not a tissue culture. Please ask any questions before making a purchase if you are unsure or have a question in general. Thank you for your time, David Mattocks

Central Florida Farms - Rare Tropicals & Palm trees, Siam Ruby Red, Borneo Giant Elephant Ear plants, Black Stem Robusta, Musa Banana plants and more!

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