tetra snowdrops?

Diane Whitehead voltaire@islandnet.com
Thu, 03 Jan 2008 14:14:48 PST
I've been scrutinizing my two snowdrop books in preparation for the  
season.

In Snowdrops, by John Grimshaw and Aaron Davis,  it was written that  
Dr. Ben Zonneveld of Leiden University was measuring the amount of DNA  
in snowdrop species and some cultivars, using Flow Cytometry.

In 2003, Zonneveld, Grimshaw and Davis, published an article about  
this in Plant Systematics and  Evolution.

Tetraploids were found in Galanthus transcaucasicus and hexaploids in  
G. elwesii and G. lagodechianus.

I grow a lot of elwesii.  Does this mean that some of them are likely  
to be hexaploid?  Would I look for the biggest ones?

I have read that some of the best-known snowdrops, like Magnet, are  
triploid, which means they are sterile.

Is there a list somewhere of tetraploid snowdrop cultivars?

Diane Whitehead
Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
maritime zone 8, cool Mediterranean climate
mild rainy winters, mild dry summers




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