North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[Mauch1@aol.com]

"an exact clone" Well, yes and no.  Basically within a cutting you might have 
genetic drift.  You could call it a "sport" like they do in apple, but 
sometimes the differences are more subtle than the descriptions usually used 
for sport.  I've read two studies, one about Concord grape and the other 
about roses, where cuttings were selected from high productive (or floriforus 
in roses) and low productive plants (or parts of plant) and then selected 
again high and low cuttings from each respective plants.  If memory serves 
the difference in productivity for grapes became extremely large.  The roses 
did have an effect, but didn't seem to increase over reselection.
In the case they were all Concord grape plants but there was a difference.  I 
think selecting for hardiness would be much harder, as so many factors come 
in to play.  Is it hardy with snow cover?, no snow?, wet cold?, dry cold?, 
dehydrating winds?, etc. I'm not saying that "TM Fig" isn't more hardy, I'm 
just not certain you could reproduce it (easily) by taking "Celeste" and 
trying to select for hardiness.  Maybe you could select for better adaptation 
to your particular site.

>I read somewhere (forgot to make of mental note of which >site) that  
>Tennessee Mountain is a selection from Celeste that was >particularly  
>fruitful & extra hardy.  I guess my question is can you >select for  
>these kinds of things by using cuttings, wont a cutting of a >cutting  
>always be an exact clone?

>mIEKAL

Chris Mauchline
SE PA, zone 6
40° 5' N    75° 51'W
~650 ft elevation