I know I'm bad at math & I need my barefoot toes to count past 10 but, the latest ploidy post has me stumped? Is it even possible? What would the plant look like??
I'm not sure, but I think you mean my reference to Phal. Golden Emperor 'Sweet.' Calling it a hexaploid was a bit of a guess, but I think that was speculated at the time. One reference on the Web says it was a triploid. At any rate, it had a higher than normal chromosome count, & subsequently turned out to be almost sterile. The same story went around about Phal. Golden Sands 'Canary.'
I was at the judging session where Golden Emperor was awarded. There was some discussion of its grainy texture, but in the end it was not considered a serious flaw. It was judged as a cut raceme, so I didn't see the foliage. However, in general, the foliage on polyploid Phals is quite distinctive. No, I have not done chromosome counts, but I have been observing Phals for 32 years.
To summarize, the leaves on polyploid hybrid Phals are extremely thick & wide. In some of them, the venation is quite coarse. They say you can tell by counting the stomata under a magnifying glass. The flower stems are sometimes much thicker than on a diploid plant. I have not noticed any distinctive difference in the roots.
Of course the difference they are working towards is that the flowers are larger and rounder than a diploid. The petals are wider. More important, the flower substance is thicker & the flowers last longer. Since the individual cells are bigger, you get that grainy texture.
The behavior of my plant of Golden Emperor was quite dramatic. When I got it, the leaves were what I expected from a polyploid plant. Then a couple of years later, the new leaves were so much thinner and narrower that I could see something had happened. No, nothing like that happened to my other Phals. Then sure enough, next time it bloomed, the flower segments were narrow & poor quality. I don't know what else to attribute it to, but that it had reverted to a diploid form. With all the meristemming that goes on, you will get mutations from time to time. They are not always defective. Sometimes you get a peloric mutation, which is actually a reversion to a more primitive flower. Sometimes you get something which is similar but a different color, like Vuyl. Cambria 'Lensing's Favorite.' Sometimes a meristemmed diploid form will give you a tetraploid mutation. It doesn't even have to be meristemming. African violets are reproduced by the thousands from leaf cuttings. They produce mutations periodically, different colors, variegated leaves, peloria, tetraploids. It's one of the reasons horticulture is so much fun.
I make no pretense of being highly scientific. My conclusion is based on eyeball observation.
Iris
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