From: "Ron Iles" roniles at eircom.net> on 2001.11.08 at 16:36:13(7785)
Denis
This recent blow-in alien thanks you for your wonderful caring so long for &
propagating the rarity on behalf of the IAS.
After all the care, I am glad that you will not have to sacrificed it for
tissue culturing even for a year & hope that a supreme strain can be found.
Sales of even a couple of hundred plants of just that one plant might make
IAS resources significantly richer, & maybe with more rarities there might
be benefit for the Rain Forest? Its probably all idealistic & impractical
of course.
I have many very distinct "one only" Spathiphyllum taxons & cultons which I
would like to disseminate with other specialist "Arks". Where is the most
economic to have quite small numbers of each tissue cultured in Florida
please? I hope the Spiritu-sancti phenomenon is the beginning of a great
new era of even greater caring & sharing in the IAS.
Ron
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----- Original Message -----
To: "Multiple recipients of list AROID-L"
Sent: Wednesday, November 07, 2001 8:49 PM
Subject: Re: Philodendron santa leopoldina
Dear John:
I am in possession of a piece of the above described plant left to the
International Aroid Society by Betty Waterbury. Over the years that I
have held it, the plant has managed to make one top cutting per year.
The society sells either the base section which grows a new top or the
top cutting which we root. There has beenn dicussion of Tissue culturing
this plant but I have been reluctant to do so as I thought there were
better clones of this species out there that had better color.
It is not the most vigorous plant out there, and I am not sure if we
were able to put a piece in culture that it would number 1, survive to
multiply in vitro and number 2, whether it would be vigorous enough to
survive explanting to soil media. It would be a challenge. I will ask my
friend, Randy Strode of Agristarts inc. if he would be willing to help
us should we decide we want to do this thing. How much are you willing
to spend on this project. This the top cutting sold for $750. at the IAS
Auction. We would have to forgo selling next year's piece to be able to
propagate it in TC as the process of harvesting the explant may kill the
plant.
Denis
john s. smolowe wrote:
>
> In his recent Aroidiana article on Philodendron spiritus-sancti, aka
> Philodendron santa leopoldina (the rare, desirable variety) Eduardo
> Goncalves suggests the species be made widely available by
> micropropagation. I emailed him and he wrote back:
>
> "I am just aware that there are no more
> than 5 known plants of P. spiritus-sancti in the wild. It can be
> considered
> almost extinct in the wild. I would love to see it being
> micropropagated,
> because it will remain as an amazing plant, even if it was being sold
> at
> K-Mart! Unfortunately, I do not have the facilities here, and I also
> do not
> have a living plant of it myself. That collected plant were donated to
> a
> private conservatory that has the proper infra-structure to grow it.
> Well, I think there are
> more plants of P. spiritus-sancti in the US than in Brazil (even
> considering
> the wild specimens!)."
>
> I'd be interested in contributing to a fund to make that happen. Does
> anyone know the practical details? I suppose we'd have to find and
> deal with an appropriate lab, and also find a willing owner of the
> correct plant.
>
> John Smolowe
> Menlo Park, CA
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