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Johnlonsdale
My Weather
My Garden
| | Posted on Tuesday, January 01, 2008 - 04:28 pm EST : |   
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Hi,
For me, one of the main reasons for membership in the Cyclamen Society is access to seeds from CSE plants through the annual seed exchange. Being in the USA it isn’t possible to enjoy the shows and other attractions, other than the biannual journal, which is excellent.
The last two years the CSE seeds available have been dominated by Cyclamen intaminatum and mirabile, with relatively little else. Great kudos would seem to be due to those guardians of the CSE plants of these species – I assume the plants are thriving, the custodians are making a lot of effort to get seed set, and they are donating large amounts if it to the exchange for distribution.
But what of the other plants the society has collected, more specifically, where are the seeds from those? Obviously seed set varies with local conditions but I would have thought it was reasonable to expect a representative selection each year from all the species collected? What, if any, are the obligations of the plant’s custodians to ensure a reasonable amount of seed is made available each year to the CS membership? What actions are taken if regular contributions from collections are not made?
Booklets are available which detail the many plants collected but are any attempts made to keep up to date and publicly available records of which plants are still alive, how they are growing, and which ones regularly set seed which makes it into the exchange? Having this data available would add a lot of value to the CSE plant collections.
I know from personal experience that we don’t all do well in one location with all the species, especially with respect to seed set. However, it would be appreciated if more seeds from a greater variety of CSE plants regularly made it into the annual seed exchange.
Any comments would be welcome!
Thanks and have a great New Year,
John
Johnlonsdale
- PA,
Zone "6b"
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Cycnich
| | Posted on Tuesday, January 01, 2008 - 05:36 pm EST : |
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Hi John nice to hear from you again. I try to answer some of your points as best I can. A custodian of a society plant is expected to donate at least 50% of any seed set to the exchange
A form used to be sent out annually to custodians for return with this information but has in recent years fallen by the wayside.
Many of these plants are long since dead, these collections go back as far as 1987 and the best you can hope for is 2nd generation seed.
My own comments are as follows, it is very difficult to persuade people to be custodians in the first instance and they feel guilty if they fail to set seed or worse still a plant should die. I think lessons have been learned as to the age of plants collected, younger ones are easier to establish after being dug up, packed in a suitcase, taken 1500 miles away , stuffed in a pot and expected to cope with an english winter. Plants often get passed from person to person as the custodians lives change, often incurring more losses. I speak from experience having been given 20 mixed plants about 6 years ago of species I do not grow so well, I managed to get some seed into the exchange from most of them but sadly all the plants are now dead. We are lucky at the moment to have tim and a few others who are looking after more than their share and doing a great job. It is a difficult situation and something the society is trying to improve upon but I think many of the plants you would like seed from have gone to meet their maker long since.
Cycnich
- west sussex,
Zone "8"
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Johnlonsdale
My Weather
My Garden
| | Posted on Tuesday, January 01, 2008 - 08:00 pm EST : |
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Hi Pat,
Thanks for your thoughtful comments. What you say about the difficulty of re-establishment of collected plants certainly makes sense. I've imported a few tubers from the UK that have been treated according to the books and they can be very difficult to get going again. They had been subject to much less stress than those collected in habitat and which take a while to get to their permanent home. It must also be hard to get a good balance - finding custodians who are responsible growers and those who are skilled and have the time to look after them properly. I'm sure any number of folks would be happy to 'give it a go' but that isn't what is needed!
I'd suggest that all of the above is even more reason for the society to keep an accurate record of what is alive, doing well and setting seed. That is what we really need, rather than a snapshot of what was collected but is now largely defunct (through no-one's fault in particular). I'd also be very interested to know which of the 2nd generation CSE plants are similar to the originals because there should be more of them and they should be younger/more vigorous. How do these get into the exchange together with their provenance? Presumably a concentration of these is grown by the collection holders - is there any obligation to supply 2nd gen CSE to the exchange?
All the best,
J.
Johnlonsdale
- PA,
Zone "6b"
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Jan_bravenboer
| | Posted on Wednesday, January 02, 2008 - 02:57 am EST : |
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Having read Pat's explanation, it means that all CSE collected C. hederifolium, C. alpinum and C. coum are dead ?
Regards,
Jan
Jan_bravenboer
- -,
Zone "7a"
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Cycnich
| | Posted on Wednesday, January 02, 2008 - 02:13 pm EST : |
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I am not for one minute implying they are all dead, but if for instance if a plant is 10 years old when collected some of these earliest collections if they still survive are 25 to 30 years old, how many plants do you have that old in your collection?. I am sure a good number survive but the lack of seed seems to suggest that a good number do not.
Cycnich
- west sussex,
Zone "8"
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Jan_bravenboer
| | Posted on Wednesday, January 02, 2008 - 02:20 pm EST : |
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Dear Pat,
What I mean and know is that it cannot be that all plants are dead. The last CSE list showed one C. coum and one C. hederifolium var. confusum. Where are all the other C. coum and C. hederifolium ? Did'nt they bring any seeds ? That is many people's question I guess.
Regards,
Jan
Jan_bravenboer
- -,
Zone "7a"
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Cycnich
| | Posted on Wednesday, January 02, 2008 - 02:51 pm EST : |
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I think you know yourself and I think Jan would agree that unless you backcross the most likely seedlings with the original plant and then in turn with future generations you will never get them coming true. This would place a huge burden on the custodians who would have neither the time, space or inclination to do so. I am not so sure that this is the purpose of collected plants. The prime reason is for research although there is a tendency to collect the more garden worthy forms to expand the range in cultivation. My own approach to CSE seed is yes I look at the info on the parent plant but if I end up with nothing like the original I don't really mind because I usually get something good out of it, the beauty for me is knowing I have seedlings of a wild collected plant and if I select only the best out I will have succesion of good plants for many years to come.I think if you want plants that are similar or the same as the original this is something you have to do yourself over several generations, I am not missing your point and it would be great to get a good proportion of near to the original seedlings but is'nt it the variation that makes us grow them in the first place it would be horrible if they all were alike.
This I do agree with you on John but we are back to the old chestnut, someone has to do it.
I will take this on board and talk to some people about it and see what I can come up with. I am retiring as show secretary in October and it may be something I could do, I think it would need a lot of work to get it up to date to start with.
Cycnich
- west sussex,
Zone "8"
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Johntlonsdale
My Favorite Photo
My Garden Journal
My Weather
My Garden
My Time
| | Posted on Wednesday, January 02, 2008 - 06:45 pm EST : |
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Hi Pat,
Sorry if I gave the wrong impression. I do agree that the progeny of CSE collections are generally unlikely to bear any resemblance to the mother plant. As you say though, that really doesn't matter because the real value of these seeds ex CSE plants is that they represent new blood, whatever the seedlings look like. I really don't care if they look like the parent or not - the variation in the CSE collections should ensure that there's lots of variety in the seedlings which we can work with.
To my mind, and for exactly these reasons, the seed from CSE 2nd generation (and beyond) plants is just as valuable and should be included in the obligations of the collection holders and the society distribution. If, as might be expected, many collected plants have very short lives in captivity, seeds from 2nd generation plants represent the true value of these collections that can be realized.
16F here tonight - getting colder!
All the best,
John
Johntlonsdale
- PA,
Zone "6b"
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Cycnich
| | Posted on Thursday, January 03, 2008 - 02:07 pm EST : |
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Nice thought John, but heres a scenario for you.Take one collected plant, I have chosen pseudibericum 02013T as an example because I was there when it was collected and it is unique.If 100 seeds were to go into the exchange in 2004 and were given to 10 people at say 10 seeds each, if each grower kept 2 of those seedlings that is 20 2nd gen plants in cultivation bearing in mind that the growers are not all custodians but ordinary members who participate in the seed exchange. If each of those 20 plants set say 50 seeds in 2007 and the seed went into the exchange that is a potential 1000 plants and if 10% are kept that is 100 3rd gen seedlings. How can these be recorded and numbered in a way that everyone understands . Multiply this by the number of healthy CSE plants that are setting seed and by the number of recipiants and in a short pace of time you have a huge problem. The only way I can see it working if there was a database available on the website that was accessable by password where the owner could enter such plants and delete them with a discription and picture, but a numbering system would have to be devised where the plants could be traced back to the original some generations on, similar to that which Michael Kammerlander uses for Dionysia hybrids.I would be interested in how Tim who is seed distribution manager would feel about this.
Cycnich
- west sussex,
Zone "8"
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Johntlonsdale
My Favorite Photo
My Garden Journal
My Weather
My Garden
My Time
| | Posted on Thursday, January 03, 2008 - 03:20 pm EST : |
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Hi Pat,
It would be wonderful if it worked just like you describe - in an ideal world! If my assumption is correct that the original collection holders and close friends maintain a concentration of CSE 2nd generation plants then I'd be happy to have seeds from them. I don't even want them to trace back to the original collection, although it would be great if they would, I'd settle for 'C. mirabile ex CSE 2nd generation plants'. This shouldn't be too onerous and would make the collected 'gene pool' available more widely.
Any comments from other CS committee members?
J.
Johntlonsdale
- PA,
Zone "6b"
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Tim
 Supporting Member
| | Posted on Thursday, January 03, 2008 - 03:43 pm EST : |
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Well... there have been a lot of valid points made so far. 2nd Gen CSE seed should be labelled as that; I don't think that ex. 0000 should be used. If future custodians are to be encouraged, it needs to be kept simple. From my point of view, I have around 160 society plants, so I wouldn't even entertain the idea. I have sown some of the mirabile seed from the plants here and have called it ex. CSE. I don't have the time to sow seed from each plant and label it as ex. CSE 04034 (for example).
John has brought up something that does need addressing desperately though; where is all the seed? I see a lot of CSE plants at the shows and I can't believe that they didn't set seed. My view is that if only one or two (or three) pods go through to fruition, those seeds should go to the society. Only if there is a good amount of seed set should the custodian keep up to 50%. After all, it's not a right to look after these plants, it's a privilege.
What the society needs to carry out is a stock-take. We need to know what's alive and what's dead. I wonder if we're all a bit scared of asking custodians why there's been no seed. It does seem a waste of a plant though, if someone has it for example, five years, donates virtually no seed from it, and then loses the plant. What is the point of collecting in the first place? Perhaps the society needs to be more ruthless when it comes to the society plants, although I realise how difficult this can be whilst trying to avoid offending people.
Tim
- Cambridgeshire,
Zone "7 "
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Tony_willis
| | Posted on Thursday, January 03, 2008 - 04:32 pm EST : |
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A thought that occurs to me is that I would think most custodians grow the collected plants amongst others they own of the same species, probably just identified by their labels. Does cross pollination not occur in some instances with those plants that have been in cultivation many years.Particularly with the autumn flowering species there are still many insects on the wing at that time.Take for example graecum from Greece grown in the same house as graecum from Turkey,what does this do to the gene pool.
The implication in the thread also seems to indicate the collected plants are widely distributed and I wonder what research is carried out on them?
Tony_willis
- Lancashire,
Zone "7"
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Tim
Supporting Member
| | Posted on Thursday, January 03, 2008 - 04:43 pm EST : |
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I think you're probably right, Tony. I have perhaps an unusual set up here, in that all but about 30 of the 2004 mirabile are kept away from other plants of the same species in my collection because they have their own glasshouses. I keep 130 of the 160 plants here separate for exactly the reasons you have pointed out regarding cross pollination.
John, I hope my last post didn't rub you up the wrong way; we must have been typing at the same time and you beat me to it!
Tim
- Cambridgeshire,
Zone "7 "
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Johntlonsdale
My Favorite Photo
My Garden Journal
My Weather
My Garden
My Time
| | Posted on Thursday, January 03, 2008 - 06:32 pm EST : |
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Hi Tim,
I agree with all your comments. Regarding cross-pollination with non-CSE plants - I'm not so sure this would be a big issue - and anyway, as long as the seeds are collected from CSE or 2nd generation CSE plants then we are still guaranteed 50% of the gene pool! Bottom line, anything is better than nothing!
Best,
J.
Johntlonsdale
- PA,
Zone "6b"
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Matthias
Supporting Member
| | Posted on Friday, January 04, 2008 - 06:28 am EST : |
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As someone who regularly studies wild cyclamen in the field and has long wanted to join and actually once unsuccessfully applied for membership, I would like to know what the legitimation is for collecting wild plants. Is my understanding wrong that official collecting permits are issued on the basis of scientific research work? What I read in this interesting thread is that the focus is on horticultural aspects, which to me would seem legitimate if it was a secondary purpose or a nice by-product.
In an ideal world I would have expected that all collected society plants were kept together in one big collection run by the society.
Tim, this idealistic view honours you, but it is not difficult to imagine that it can become a burden in some cases ...
One comment, if you allow: One or two collected plants from a big population can, of course, add interesting genes or gene combinations to existing "gene pools" of cultivated groups, but they can not add THE gene pool, because the gene pool is the sum of all genes in all combinations in a population = all plants.
Matthias
- South Germany,
Zone "7"
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Tim
Supporting Member
| | Posted on Friday, January 04, 2008 - 09:12 am EST : |
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Matthias, the text below is most of what was posted by Martyn Denney on Cyclamen-L yesterday. I think it will answer your questions about the legitimicy of collecting cyclamen tubers; scientific research is the primary reason. Most of us on this forum are probably more interested in the horticultural aspects though and knowing that some attractive plants are collected, we would like the opportunity to get some seeds from these plants.
The problem would finding someone to look after the entire collection. I would gladly do it, but whether the society would want to go down that route is another matter. It's fine, until something like (just for example) vine weevil take a hold and then the whole collection is at risk. Vine weevil probably isn't the best example, but you know what I'm getting at. Also, we have a class at the shows which is specifically for collected plants or the progeny of collected plants, so by having them scattered, there is more of a chance of the membership getting to see the plants close up. If one member were to have them, that probably wouldn't happen so much.
Now for Martyn's post:
The subject of CSE seed availability has been raised before under
various headings but John Lonsdale has typically raised a number of
interesting questions that strike at the heart of the matter.
Before dealing with his specific questions I feel it is necessary to
put the CSE plant collections in context. This too has been done
before in the journal but bears repeating in summary.
Cyclamen are included in Appendix B of CITES - the International
Convention on Trade in Endangered Species. This means that the
collection of plants from the wild has to be licensed by the host
(exporting) country and the import licensed by the destination
(importing) country.
The Cyclamen Society collects small numbers of plants strictly under
license during field studies in order to have genetic material of
known origin for use in the Phylogenic research carried out in
conjunction with the University of Reading. We would not be able to
obtain licenses to collect plants merely to provide seed for
members. However, although the horticultural merit of plants is of
no consequence to the scientific work, we make a point of collecting
such plants in order (through their seed) to widen the variety of
good plants available in cultivation. By doing this we contribute
to the conservation of the genus. The logic is that if there are
really good plants available in cultivation already, it lessens the
perceived need for illegal collection from the wild.
For more information about this please read two articles from the
Cyclamen Society's journal:
"Seeds from the Society's Expedition Plants" by Brian Mathew (Vol.26
No.1 page 30 – June 2002); and "CITES update" by Martyn Denney
(Vol.30 No.2 pages 56-57 – December 2006).
The plants collected during field studies vary considerably in age
from quite ancient tubers to some which are little more than
seedlings. It is not always possible to tell the size or age of a
tuber from the growth above ground. As an extreme example,
CSE98349D is a plant of Cyclamen persicum that had a single ¾ inch
(2 cm) leaf but a tuber of about 4 inches (10 cm) diameter.
There are two points here: 1) The act of collection during the
growing season and usually at the peak of flowering is in itself
very stressful to the plant; 2) No Cyclamen lasts forever and some
species are longer lived than others. As a consequence of these
points many of the original collections from the 1980's and 1990's
have died – most of the plants collected in the later 1990's were of
the less long-lived species. Fortunately, many of them have
survived in their 2nd and 3rd generation progeny. There are some
plants remaining from these years but the seed production from many
of these has dwindled and some never set seed at all. There are of
course exceptions.
A glance through the list of CSE collections made in this millennium
shows that Cyclamen intaminatum, C. mirabile, and C. hederifolium
predominate, and it is these, as John says, that are currently
producing the majority of seed. Let me say here that the autumn
2006 collections of C. hederifolium from Sicily are still recovering
and have set no seed at all this season.
To answer some of John's specific points that I have not covered
above:
The custodians have an obligation to collect seed from the plants
and submit it to the exchange. They are permitted to retain a small
quantity for their own use as it would be unreasonable not to allow
this, and generally they only do this in the first couple of years.
What actions are taken if regular contributions are not made? The
custodians are known growers and all are volunteers. In extreme
cases plants can be (and have been) withdrawn and placed elsewhere,
but usually there is a good reason for deficiencies. Plants can be
encouraged, but cannot be forced to set seed. Mice do sometimes get
into glasshouses and eat an entire crop. The seasons lately have
been weird. Custodians often suffer from a feeling of guilt!
We periodically hold a census of CSE plants to establish which are
alive and their general state of health. We need this information
for our research program. We do have records of the plants that
produce seed. We do not make this data available publicly.
John, you say that making this available would add a lot of value to
the collections. Bearing in mind that the seed distributed may well
be a hybrid between the CSE plant and another of unknown origin, it
is difficult to see where the value lies.
Tim
- Cambridgeshire,
Zone "7 "
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Cycnich
| | Posted on Friday, January 04, 2008 - 09:47 am EST : |
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I would like to thank Martyn for clarifying and explaining the situation with the CSE plants. What Martyn has said more than satisfies me. I would like to add also that all the data collected both in the field and in the research is available to the relevant authorities and interested parties from the countries concerned should they require it. This in itself has a real value in terms of conservation of the plants in the wild as many populations are threatened by development as tourism grows.I myself am very proud to be a member of a society that actually does something positive towards the plants that they are interested in, there are plenty of others who preach conservation at every chance but who actually do nothing.
Cycnich
- west sussex,
Zone "8"
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