Experimenting for the fun of it is entertaining and you can or should learn from it.

But the practical side of this is that there are many species out there that can grow under the conditions you want to provide. Maples are not one of them. It's something I think every newbie goes through. Been there, done that.

I prefer to provide the correct conditions for the particular species I'm dealing with as best I can. At some point, most get tired of counterproductive experimenting.

This is not meant to demean or put you down. It's just an opinion based on growing container plants for a year or two.

randy

Jam, I'm trying to understand the issue at hand here. I'm assuming that you're trying to grow Japanese Maples in the Canadian climate, but can't grow them outside as the winters are too harsh, and thus is attempting to grow them inside without dormancy?

Again, not to try to discourage you, but there are methods of overwintering plants such as JM's to induce dormancy but not finish them off.

-Audric

Audric,
No, I meant to get maples to acclimatize to grow in tropical regions where dormancy would not be available. It is natural for bonsaiist in hot regions to have the desire to bonsai maples especially those with color in their summer leaves. Also any modification you create in plants is stored in their genetic make up and thus transferable to their progeny, then seedlings from acclimatized mother plants can survive in the altered enviroment.
Randy,
I know I am fighting against odds and I love experimenting. Don't worry about hurt feelings, I am beginning to enjoy some forms of criticism from peers.
Thank you both.

Jam, thank you for clearing things up. If you are trying to alter the genetic make-up of the tree, you are going beyond acclimitization (i.e. within one individual) into evolution (over successive generations). Short of exposing the plants to radiation, you won't be able to change the genetic make-up of a [single] plant by slowly exposing it to the desired environment.

-Audric

Tropical Acer Palmatums, thats a great idea Jam .
Here's one idea
Just get yourself a large greenhouse , plant a couple of thousand AP seed , after they sprout and take hold , gradually turn up the tropical heat, humidity, and light to equatorial rain forrest contitions. When all the young trees have died from these conditions ,except ten or twenty get them back to temperate contitions. Grow them until they are bearing seed .( You have to keep all other possible scources of AP pollen from the outside from your test trees).
Gather a couple of thousand seed from your , most tropical resistant trees ,and start all over again.
In each succesive cycle you should see your trees getting stronger,and more at home with tropical contitions. Keep the cycle going until no trees die from heat and no dormancy.
You can then patent your Tropical AP seeds , become a millionare selling them to tropical customers.
Should'nt take a thousand years . But I'll go ahead and wish you luck now , cause I probably won't see the Tropical AP Maples ( Unless maybe you can invent an immortality pill in the meantime).
Good Luck
R

True Audric, now I believe I am barking up the wrong tree. Habridizers had achieved the opposite, they get the progenies to be hardier than their parents by selective breeding. Perhaps following their path but going in reverse could be the easier and faster way. Just a thought
Raiun,
Thanks for reminding me of the enormity of the task. Anyway I am rating my chances of ever creating a tropicalized maple at 0.5% or even 0.005%. Who knows?

Audric, Your statement "You won't be able to change the genetic makeup by slowly exposing the organism to the desired environment".
I was referring to storing the modified traits in the genes. Now whether this process involves a change in the genetic make-up or not I couldn't tell. Modification in a specie brought about by changes in environment is inherited by its progeny. If not how would you explain that the offspring of animals or plants that have adapted to a particular environment do not need to go through the same regime of acclimatization as their parents. Thus modification is an inheritable trait.
Incidentally, I have seen an acreage of oak grown in Malaysia purportedly for its wood. I am pretty sure all species of oak are deciduous. Thus this group of oak has adapted to a tropical environment. Interesting point.

Jam, the physical characteristics of organisms can be the result of genetic or environmental factors. For example, a plant grown in shade may develop larger leaves. However, if you plant its offspring in the sun in following years, they will develop normal leaves. Organisms cannot consciously alter their genetic information.

The most widely-accepted theory of evolution is that of natural selection, proposed by Darwin. What Raiun is proposing is a method of artificial selection to speed up the process, but the concept is the same: Any organism which is better adapted to its particular environment has a better chance of surviving and reproducing, thus increasing the chances that its genes will contribute to the next generation. Thus, favourable inheritable traits increase in frequency and less favourable traits decrease.

The "Malaysia Oak" that you may have seen may be what is more commonly known as Rubberwood, or Hevea brasiliensis. It is not related to oaks (Quercus).

-Audric

Could you provide examples of pines in tropical areas? And the Wrightia you talk about, are these Water Jasmines?

-Audric

Audric,
I must say you are full of surprises, one of your favourable traits I hope. Does the transfer of a favourable trait involve the genetic make-up; Dna was an unknown or very new during my young days.
I definately cannot comment on the Malaysian Oak at this point of time.
Hoping to search for more info on DNA, I typed 'Plant Acclimatization' into the internet. What a surprise to watch this thread appearing at the top of the list, twice as 1 & 2. Have to be careful about any crap I venture into in future... Hehehe

Well, science can be a risky business. But remember that what you're talking about is less so acclimatization than it is adaptation.

-Audric

Jamkh,

Quote: "I was referring to storing the modified traits in the genes. Now whether this process involves a change in the genetic make-up or not I couldn't tell."

Traits encoded in genes are the same thing as genetic make-up, just a different way of saying it.

Quote: "Modification in a specie brought about by changes in environment is inherited by its progeny."

Not so, that is like saying that constant pruning of a tree produces genetic dwarfs among its offspring. Think how absurd that sounds.

Quote: "If not how would you explain that the offspring of animals or plants that have adapted to a particular environment do not need to go through the same regime of acclimatization as their parents. Thus modification is an inheritable trait."

I think you are confusing genotype with phenotype. The former is genetically predetermined and not subject to change through outside pressure while the latter is the expression of the former. AudricÂs example regarding leaf size in shaded plants illustrates this concept. Although the plants outward appearance may change, (phenotype), its genetic code, (genotype), has not.

Evolution is a process by which a useful genetic variation, be it natural genetic diversity produced through sexual reproduction or a random mutation, is capitalized upon by an organism and then reinforced through natural selection. Again I defer to AudricÂs explanation.

You may wish to acquaint yourself with the work of Luther Burbank.

Norm

Here is a link that might be useful: Luther Burbank

Norm,

The example you gave somewhat departs from the type of modification I was referring to:

Quote: "Modification in a specie brought about by changes in environment is inherited by its progeny."
Not so, that is like saying that constant pruning of a tree produces genetic dwarfs among its offspring. Think how absurd that sounds.

When you prune a tree, there is no modification changes within the tree, you only have imposed or forced upon the tree an external temporary modification. I say temporary as the tree left to grow on its own without further pruning would follow its own natural growth and size. The modifications I am referring to is induced by stresses brought about by changes in the environment and is made by the plant without human interaction.
When such a modification persists for long periods of time, like for the whole duration of its life then this modification becomes a new beneficial trait inheritable by future generations.

The following paragraph is taken from Wikipedia Encyclopedia :
When traits are determined by a complex interaction of genotype and environment it is possible to measure the heritability of a trait within a population. However, many non-scientists who encounter a report of a trait having a certain percentage heritability, imagine non-interactional, additive contributions of genes and environment to the trait. As an analogy, some laypeople may think of the degree of a trait being made up of two "buckets", genes and environment, each able to hold a certain capacity of the trait. But even for intermediate heritabilities, a trait is always shaped by both genetic dispositions and the environments in which people develop, merely with greater and lesser plasticities associated with these heritability measures.

AudricÂs example regarding leaf size in shaded plants illustrates this concept. Although the plants outward appearance may change, (phenotype), its genetic code, (genotype), has not.
In the above example, the plant has undergone no modification at all. All plants have this ability to grow either shade leaves or sun leaves, this is part of its physiological/genetic make-up.
Maybe this link may be useful: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_selection

Jam, the environment can change the genetic make-up of organisms over successive generations. It does NOT change the genetic make-up of individual organisms. The environment plays its part by removing organisms with less favourable traits, and the ones with more favourable traits pass their genes onto the next generation. Over time, the frequency of the traits of the group of organisms "shift:" there are less with unfavourable and more with favourable genes. However, this depends on existing genetic variation. New forms of genes are not the source, except for mutations.

-Audric

The modifications I am referring to is induced by stresses brought about by changes in the environment and is made by the plant without human interaction.
When such a modification persists for long periods of time, like for the whole duration of its life then this modification becomes a new beneficial trait inheritable by future generations.

The trait does not become encoded in an individual organism's DNA, even after long periods of time. Like I've stated before, it takes successive generations for the environment to influence the genetics of the population.

An example may be the best way to help clarify things. Say we have a population of pine trees growing on the top of a mountain. Currently, they grow at the same rate as their counterparts at much lower altitudes. Thus, they grow quickly but when the winter sets in, the tops freeze and die off.

Is everyone with me? To sum up, we have quickly growing trees, whose top growth repeatedly dies off. Good?

So it is probably obvious that any new growth which dies off is a waste of resources. It is in the best interest of these pines, however, that available resources are used most effectively as they are scarce on the mountain. They could be used for lower growth, or producing offspring.

Now say that there is a group of pines (within the population) that grow 10 cm shorter than the other pines yearly. That means that they save "10 cm worth" of resources every year which they can put towards other endeavours, such as other growth (root, branching, etc), or reproduction. Thus, the trees which grow more slowly are able to produce more seeds. Fast forward 100 years!

All the original trees have died off. Because the slower-growing trees produced more seeds, producing more offspring, there's a greater number of slower-growing trees. However, they still have portions which die off. The process repeats itself. Any trees which grow even more slowly have less which die off, allowing them to produce more seeds, allowing them to produce more offspring, allowing them to survive and become more predominant over successive generations.

Fast forward 10 000 years, and we'll have a population of ALL slow-growing trees, in which the genotype for growth rate is reflective of the expressed growth rate.

Do you see the difference? The first generation of pines may all have been the same height (i.e. "stunted" by nature), but their specific genetic makeup was not affected by nature. The following generations' genes reflect the environmental pressures.

-Audric

Jamkh,

I tried to find the text that you quoted in order to ascertain its context but that text does not exist in the link you provided. This quote comes directly from the Wikipedia article that you linked to.

"By the definition of fitness, individuals with greater fitness are more likely to contribute offspring to the next generation, while individuals with lesser fitness are more likely to die early or they fail to reproduce. As a result, alleles which on average result in greater fitness become more abundant in the next generation, while alleles which generally reduce fitness become rarer. If the selection forces remain the same for many generations, beneficial alleles become more and more abundant, until they dominate the population, while alleles with a lesser fitness disappear. In every generation, new mutations and recombinations arise spontaneously, producing a new spectrum of phenotypes. Therefore, each new generation will be enriched by the increasing abundance of alleles that contribute to those traits that were favored by selection, enhancing these traits over successive generations."

At the risk of oversimplifying, I repeat, environmental pressures do not cause changes in genotype! Natural variation occurs through sexual reproduction or random mutation. Only then does the environment begin to play a part in influencing whether the new trait become more common in successive generations or dies out.

Norm

Here is what I understand about this subject. There is nothing we can do in applying an outside influence on any living thing except a flat worm that will alter it's genetic structure in any way short of a one-hundred-thousand-year program. However understanding that J.Maples are highly variable it is possible that in one batch of seeds one might find a seedling that is tolerant to tropical conditions. It is more likely you will find one that can endure conditions that are more semi-tropical and not so dominantly temperate.

If several of these could be located they could be allowed to mature, and go to seed being cross pollinated with each other. Withing that generation one could keep the trees that were even more tropic friendly and continue the process. Eventually you might come up with the tree you are looking for---fifty years later or never. Once this tree is found you would have to propagate it using grafting techniques because seed grown J.Maples are notorious for no two being exactly alike. This would therefore be a new cultivar. What you want to do is plausible but probably not possible.

Audric, Norm, and Vancewood have this correct. Variation within a species is produced through the expression(phenotype) of different alleles(genotype). The scenario which Vancewood proposed above is exactly what would need to happen to ascertain a viable specimen of tropical-tolerant Japanese Maple. There would have to be one specimen that was expressing the correct phenotypes(and therefore genotypes) to allow for the tropical conditions. This specimen could then be pollinated with itself(can you do that with Japanese maples?) or another specimen showing the same traits. Over time you would create a population of these tropical-tolerant Japanese maples.

The evolutionary theory that jamkh is referring to is called Lamarckian evolution. In terms of species evolution, it generally states that physical traits acquired for an organism's survival during it's lifetime can be passed on to it's offspring. In the context of species evolution, this theory is, for the most part, disregarded in favor of Darwinian evolution, though many still consider it viable for things such as cultural evolution.

Quick definitions:

-genotype: Genetic code for specific traits(e.g. eye or hair color)

-phenotype: Physical expression of specific genotypes(e.g. brown eyes/hair, blond hair, blue eyes etc.)

-natural selection: The effect of an organism's phenotypic (and therefore genotypic) expression on it's life (e.g. does a human with brown hair or blond hair have a better chance of producing offspring). Natural selection always acts on the individual.

-(Darwinian) evolution: The effect of individual instances of natural selection on the genetic makeup of a population (e.g. if humans have a better chance of producing offspring with brown hair, then over time the entire human population will end up with brown hair). Evolution always acts on a population.

If you feel that one of my definitions is wrong, please correct me. Thanks,

Ryan

I think you hit the nail on the head. I remember a biology class I took many moons ago when this very thing was discussed. The scenario described was one in which a couple of scientists cut the tails off of some lab mice for several hundred generations and continually inter-bred the mice. Not one mouse was born without a tail after all those many generations of not being allowed to keep a tail. Each new generation was born with tails.

Hey Guys
I really put my plan forth , to show the near impossibility of creating a tropical Japanese Maple. They would either adapt to the changes, over the generations or they would perish. As many past animal and at least one human species has perished.
Every breed of cattle, or dog we have was created , by breeding the animals who came closest to your ideal , and cull the animals who least display these qualities.
Nature does it every day.
If you are breeding work horses you breed the horses who can put out the most work to like horses, and after a while your get Clydesdales. who if the machine age hadn't came along woud be as big as elephants by now. Yet all these breeds are geneticaly just like the original pair.( as far as I know.)
If you are breeding sled dogs you breed the best of the survivors each year to the same till you get the malmute or husky.
But I think these would be easy compared to Tropical Japanese Maples.
But.... I hear of new cultivars being raised further South all the time. Maples are being raised deeper into the Fla.penensula all the time. Once unheard of.
Well thats all the farm boy genitics I know, Its easier for me to just move further North.
R