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Written by Nate
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Tuesday, 08 February 2005 |
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Page 4 of 4
Asked if monstrose or cristate growth can be conveyed through grafting:
...The monstrose/cristate growth has to be something that is innate to the grafted scion to begin with. I have heard other people say that they have had "normal" scions go monstrose after grafting them (and that may well be true). However, that is not a condition that is transferred from rootstock to graftstock. If the graft's growth tip is damaged, that may well lead to some unusual growth. I have a friend who owns a lovely cristate ferrocactus. He claims that it was normal when it was young, but he accidentally stepped on it and crushed it. Instead of pitching it, he kept it, only to find that when it healed and started to grow, it had gone cristate. I've tried stressing and damaging growth tips in T.pachanoi and have gotten some interesting looking plants for my trouble. But, ultimately, the plants returned to normal growth once the growth tip was able to re-establish itself. I'll put up some digital shots of these experiments soon. To the point, I have had no success inducing monstrose/cristate growth and, as such, have concluded that it has more to do with genetics rather than physical damage. I HAVE, however, seen cristate cacti switch over to monstrose growth and back. I just took a cutting of monstrose tissue from the large cristate T. pachanoi that you saw... earlier. It's too small to root, so I'm grafting it to a normal T. pachanoi.
Wow, I need to shorten my answers! I'm a wordy chap, eh?
Sharing pictures from an acquaintance:  I just IM'd an acquaintance in Italy who sent these images. It's a shot of a Lophophora williamsii var. ceaspitosa. He says that it was a normal looking graft at first, but as it started to produce new buttons, it started to display what appears to be the beginnings of cristate growth. He seems to think that the extremely accelerated "forced growth" that results from grafting in addition to mercury halide light has caused this particular graft to go cristate. Looking at the center of the mother scion, I can see what he means. It looks as though the apical tip is elongating into the beginnings of a "growth edge". Perhaps all cacti are capable of cristate/monstrose growth when placed under certain stresses. If a grafted cacti is over-watered and over-fertilized, it will usually burst its outer cuticle, leaving unsightly scars that take years to overgrow. Maybe some cacti are better adapted to compensate for accelerated growth by elongating their apical tips into edges, thus going cristate. That still does not address the external stress vs. genetic factor question, since this kind of growth is still very uncommon.... this particular cacti may have had a genetic predisposition towards cristate growth prior to its grafting. Ah, well. Anyhooz, here is the photo... it's quite lovely! Oh, and check out this photo of a striking true-cristate peyote that he found. Lovely!
Thus ends the first of three articles compiled in tribute to Cancerian. The full size images corresponding to this article's thumbnails can be found in the T. pachanoi and Lophophora albums in our Image Gallery. The original text has had minor edits for spelling and punctuation.
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