okay the following is so long i got logged out while typing it: my thoughts on the subject: sweet gum trees. (they produce terpenes and i always thought they were like bud's great ancestor or distant relative or something like that.
tree top grow? i would like to go to the top of a big tree, chainsaw a hole in it, to be the pot, run a small water line up it, and grow like that.
but here are my real goals:
tissue culture:
sometime (in the distant future) after i have the funds and the resources, i would like to create new plants. they may be chimeras, graft hybrids, whatever you want to call them, but here is how i would do it: plant tissue culture, i would snip little pieces of strawberry plant and the growing tip of hi-qual bud, put them together in the culture dish, touching, and let them grow together. i would attempt the same with sweetgum and various other plants.
another method i would try, which requires a little math knowledge:
inducing polyploidy.. doubling the chromosome count..
okay what i was going to say was doubling the chromosome number multiple times until you have a match between the two plants you want to hybridize/graft. but i did some math (14*2*2*2forever*2) trying to get something divisible by 20 and it doesnt seem to happen. but say i did what i was saying, about plant tissue culture. if the two plants combined, chromosome count would be 34 if the strawberries had 14 and bud had 20. that is an even number so it could possibly reproduce with another plant of its species, (which i created)
or induce polyploidy and you have 68 chromosomes, 2 copies of every chromosome.
you can also create haploid plants, which have half the normal amount of chromosomes, by growing one of it's gametes in tissue culture. (pollen grains are an example of a gamete)
then you can induce polyploidy of the haploid plants (double the chromosome count using colchicine) and you have a plant with the normal amount of chromosomes, but 2 copies of each chromosome, because you halved them, took one half, and doubled it. this way, you are taking half the genes away from the plant, creating a new plant with only half the original genetics(which will probably look totally different) then doubling those genes with the colchicine which interferes with cell division, (when the cell doubles its chromosomes, normally splitting the new copy into the new cell, when using colchicine, the new copies stay in the old cell and the new cell is just empty cell walls) once you've done that, any recessive genes (that were in the half of the genetics that your haploid plant contained) will be doubled. when you have 2 recessive genes, that trait is expressed, whereas it only takes one dominant gene to express a trait. so this will bring out recessive traits in the new plant you just made by throwing away half the genes then doubling the remaining genes. (i am using genes and chromosomes as the same word, although there are probably multiple genes in one chromosome, dont remember)
So, this is useful for plant breeding: say you take male gamete, grow it in tissue culture then double the ploidy, and take female gamete, grow in tissue culture and double the ploidy. then you have one plant with either 2X or 2Y chromosomes, and all recessive traits carried on the chromosomes are expressed in its phenotype(as well as dominant ones). that is from the male gamete haploid plant that you turned diploid with colchicine.
then from your female gamete haploid plant you turned into a diploid plant, you also have recessive gene/traits expressed in the pheno, and the dominant ones, but this one always has 2 X chromosomes. Then you mate your chosen XX or YY plant which came from male pollen, with your chosen XX female plant. (choose both for favorite expressed traits) you mate them, if you mated the YY with the XX, all the babies will be XY, male, and great fathers for your future plants, since you chose them for their genetics. If you mate your XX(which originated from male gamete) and XX female, all the babies will be female. im not sure if that's how feminized seeds are created, seems a little complicated but would also come out with 100% chance of females, no hermies, because the mother and father both are passing on an X chromosome and no Y chromosome, therefore all females XX.
now, the way i THINK they make 'feminized' seed is to just double the ploidy (once again probably using colchicine) that way every chromosome is doubled(yielding 40 chromosomes for bud). it is best to do this with both parents so you dont come out with sterile offspring in future generations. double them both, your males will be XYXYwith 36 other chromosomes(or XXYYidk), females will be XXXX36 other chromosomes. then you have (if males go XYXY you have 50%chance hermie(XXXY, XYXX), 25%chance double femaleXXXX, 25%chance double maleXYXY.(but double male would actually be female with 2Y chromosomes.. so a weird plant possibility of herm i guess, possibility of male plants.. )
if males go XXYY then you have 100% chance hermaphrodite XXXY
if you want to figure out how any two of those creations would mate,
http://www.changbioscience.com/genetics/punnett.html thats how i worked out those because its faster than doing it myself.
and now for an explanation of why you must double both parents chromosomes or risk sterile offspring in subsequent generations:
normal plants 2n=20 n=10 from each parent 10+10 = 20 again. in normal plants thats either 9x or 9y plus 9x = 9xy male or 9xx female
now, if you double both parents, 2n=40 n=20 and 20+20=40 again. i dont want to go into the X and Y on this one, i just did up there. (polyploid plants are usually stronger and grow better than normal ones, and polyploidy would also explain why so many growers get hermies.)
so that explains 2 normal plants mating (20) and 2 polyploid plants mating(although you could polyploid beyond 40 to 80, 160, sexing gets all complex again.)
okay now say you had one polyploid plant and one normal diploid plant:
2n=40 n=20 and normal 2n=20 n=10
20+10=30 30 is the new 2n for the babies. the 2n=30 baby has the possibility of having XXX or XXY and if it has babies 2n=30 n=15 if bred with a normal plant 2n=20 n=10 10+15=25 then it has an odd # of chromosomes, therefore cant equally divide from 2n=25 so most likely sterile. if you bred it with a 2n=40 then 20+15= 35, same problem, cant divide by 2.
so the only way it could ever make reproduce is with another triploid or whatever. i say triploid since 2n=20 originally, so n=10 originally and 3n would be 30, although the new babies are 2n=30 for breeding purposes, they would have to breed with other mutants with 30 chromosomes to ever have living babies. at this point you could induce polyploidy again with the colchicine and get 2n=60 where n=30 and they could once again be fertilized by normal plants and end up as 2n=40 again, or if they bred with 2n=40 plants where n=20 and 20+30=50 2n=50 and n=25, once again putting them in the situation either be doubled to 2n=100 or only produce viable offspring with 2n=50 and i am not going any further but that is the complicated breeding program i may eventually work with (on paper first because its much faster than doing it and realizing you've done it for nothing) to eventually be able to mix strawberries and bud, or other plants with plants that are currently incompatible, via grafting or otherwise.
sorry for the incredibly long post, didnt expect to go into genetics, but at least we found out that with tissue culture and induced polyploidy, you can selectively breed your plants to visually pick the best genetics, and produce 100% female seeds, or 100% male seeds, for passing on those chosen genetics. and the other way which only involves colchicine and no haploid plants, no tissue culture required, you can get yourself lots of hermaphrodites, and how breeding those with normal plants could result in natural termination in a couple generations.