I finally found seeds on a maple witches' broom. I found 6 fat (no empty seed pod) seeds on my acer circinnatum 'WB Hoyt' the other day. The tree is a classic witches broom with short internodes and foreshortened spatulate center leaf lobes. I have never found a seed on a palmatum wb although a friend Billy Schwartz, whom I call the 'father of witches' brooms' since he discovered 'Shaina', 'Daniel', 'Matthew', 'Royle', 'Jerre Schwartz'\ (all named for his family members), tells me he has seen seeds on wb's. Outside of humans grafting them, how do palmatum wb's pro- pagate if they produce few if any seeds? A brilliant plant geneticist friend who is very much into maples told me that he believes maple wb's remain sexually immature and so do not produce flowers/seeds (the exception, of course, proves the rule) so I am asking forum members to keep an eye out for wb flowers/seeds and to share information/stories on such. Please make sure the tree is a definite wb; I have a forum friend who found seeds on his "wb" but the leaves do not look like a wb to me and I have 1 of his grafted trees and it is not a wb in my opinion. Please let me know if any of you have seen seeds on a wb? Thank you.
Hi Mike, Congrats for the discovery! When I am around the garden I always think of you but no flowers/no seeds in my WBs this year. I guess that what your plant geneticist friend says is probably right Gomero
Hi, Gomero. Thank you for your good feedback and your fine email, my friend. I was just up in Sonoma county at a friend's wonderful maple nursery collecting seeds in our 1st rain of the season, but it was too wet and the seeds clung to my hands and would not go into the collection packets so I called it early and will return Tuesday. Seed collecting is best done in dry conditions! Be well.
Mike, So far I've found seed on two different trees that claim to be witches brooms. One is Brandt's Dwarf and the other is Tiny Tim. Both trees exhibit witches broom shortened center lobes, but only the Brandt's Dwarf seemed to be a true compact wb with shortened spacing between the internodes. I will let you know how the results turn out on the seeds! Good luck in seed collection! Tim
Hey Mike. I have a Kandy Kitchen that produced seeds 3 years ago. It was the strangest clusters of seeds I have ever seen. Instead of 2 seeds connected making a typical samara, this cluster had 7 or 8 seeds all connected making a very strange looking cluster. Looking back, I wish I had taken some pictures but I guess I figured it would happen again. I have yet to see seeds on that tree, or any of my Kandy Kitchen trees again.
Tim & Micah- Thanks so much for sharing your experiences about wb's seeds. I am planting the 6 seeds today after keeping them cool in the fridge. I soaked them in water and several of them sank hopefully indicating viable embryoes. Has anyone on the forum successfully germinated a witches broom seed? It would seem from the extreme rarity of palmatum wb seeds that Nature does NOT want to germinate wb seeds yet propagating them by grafting seems quite acceptable to Nature - interesting!
Hi Mike-- Don't know if Kotohime is a witches' broom--I suspect not, even though it kind of looks like one. I was very surprised to see it in flower some years ago. If you look closely at the image, you can see that it has both male and female flowers, and the beginnings of seeds. They all dropped off before they were mature--too bad. I wonder, though, even if you never get seeds on a witches' broom--could you use the pollen to fertilize flowers on a more normal palmatum cultivar? Or is there any chance that pollen from a normal would produce seed via a female flower on a witches' broom? Finding out would involve lots of screwing around, but if we didn't like screwing around we probably wouldn't be growing these trees in the first place. Good luck. Dan
Look at a Witch's Broom as something like a mole on a person. The growth is abnormal, possibly discolored, but the genetics won't cause a person's childrent to be mole-colored (though they may have moles of their own). I wouldn't expect any wonderful differences. But, to tell you the truth, as far as I'm concerned, a Japanese Maple is...well....a Japanese Maple - and that is good enough most of the time, in my book.
A while back a forum member asked me if I had ever seen a "true" witches broom yield seed. Well, I have and in a particular instance the seed was not viable. Then again I know of another Maple that was clearly a witches broom while in its juvenile years that did not yield any samaras that once in its mature years did yield seed but the tree was no longer a witches broom either but became a standard broom once mature. I've seen Aratama do this and I've seen Shaina do this as well that when the trees were less than 12 years old we saw an abundance of stubbed middle lobes but what we did not see were stubbed middle lobes all over the plant. Over time we saw less and less stubbed middle lobes and from the normal growth we did see more incidence of samara and seed production. I have to believe that some of the witches broom Maples can yield seed but how viable will these seed be? In a certain Maple we saw that many of the seed were blanks with no development of the endosperm giving rise to the notion that that perhaps pollen from the male flower could not have been received by a female egg. Or could it be that the female flower in this case was either limited in its ability to self, or was incapable of selfing altogether. There are a few variables as to why in some witches broom Pines there was no seed development inside the cones. Yet, in the broom Pines seed were generally found inside the cones. In some cases, one trial I am aware of, seed from the broom Pines did not always yield broom like progeny. What I would have more interest in seeing and working with are Maples that remain a witches broom allover the tree that do yield viable seed. I would have had some real fun determining percentages of how many seedling offspring had the stubbed middle lobe and how many didn't in their first year of development. Then how many of the second year seedlings remained a witches broom, how many became a broom and how many were neither a witches broom or a broom. It does stand to reason that a chimeral limb sport can remain the same for many years, can revert even more and can return to normal as well. Usually it is the latter returning to normal growth that we see more frequently over time. This is part of the reasoning why some people in the past waited to see seed development from a limb sport, germinated the seed on and then determined which seedlings retained the appearance of the limb sport and which seedlings didn't. In yesteryear it was the seedlings that looked like the limb sport that were the most prized. Today, people would just see the limb sport and almost immediately graft it hoping it will hold. The problem with this approach is we have no way of telling for how long will this same limb sport be perpetuated and for how long will the limb sport later return to normal growth. We see the latter more often than we care to admit in which a particular variegated Maple may sustain itself by being variegated it its juvenile years lose all of its variegation before it gets to maturity. Or in the case of another variegated Maple see it well variegated for five to seven years start to show less and less variegated leaves by the time the tree is 12 years old and by the fifteenth year be all green growth with no apparent variegation. We just cannot say with certainty what many of the proposed witches broom Maples will look like later on in years. For the present we like the stubbed middle lobe feature but how widespread will it remain in the tree and for how long will we see this trait from that Maple? Jim
Jim, A "witches broom" is simply a place where the growth is abnormal on the tree. As I had implied earlier, it still has all the same genetic makeup of the tree that was grown from seed. It just has something odd caused by its genetics in "this particular spot" on the tree. The only way to reproduce it is asexually. This may be done by graft, layering, air layering, or applying some rooting compound to a cutting and rooting it. Grafting seems to be the choice of most, as rooting by any process can be problematic. There is also a possibility that tissue culture would work to reproduce the base type, but I don't know if you will reliably get a witches broom from this process. Since the WB is caused by a genetic malfunction that causes a part of the tree to behave oddly, it is also often the case that the tree will repair it. This is what happens when you see a part of the grafted portion of the WB revert to the standard form of the tree. I see the same thing from other mutants, too. For instance, my Butterfly will frequently put out a branch that grows just green leaves. The Harlequin Maple (Variegated Norway Maple) is notorious for doing this, too. The genetic malfunction causes the growth engine of the tree to work oddly - kind of like a two gears both missing teeth sometimes slips a bit, causing the resulting movement of a wheel not to be what it ought to be. (I had that happen on my windshield wipers a while back. Very annoying.) Because it isn't working quite right, other functions of the vegetative material may also function incorrectly. This is why it may have trouble producing seeds. I have similar things happen with a number of different kinds of plants. There are varieties of Daylilies that have beautiful double flowers, but produce only stamen in the vast majority of its flowers. Still, every now and then - maybe one time in 10,000 or so - there is a seed-producing flower. I've seen the same sort of thing also with one of my iris varieties, where every now and then there are four falls instead or three. And, of course, perhaps the most famous of this sort of growth mutation would be the four-leaved clover. So, what do you do when you see the mutant reverting to form? I am merciless. I do everything I can to remove the offending part of the tree!!! It may start out with just plucking leaves, as I do with my Butterfly JM, but extreme pruning is also an option. I have a neighbor with a dwarf Alberta Spruce that keeps having one part of it grow like mad. So far, I've resisted the temptation to go over and rip out the offending branches from the trunk...but one of these days I will lose it. So, if it seeds, great. You have JM seeds that may contain the same odd characteristics and may end up producing a new tree that also contains a witches broom that may be grafted elsewhere. They also may be just the same old JM that was the source of the witches broom - or some other variation of it. They also may not be fertile, or may, in rare circumstances, contain just the witches broom genes and produces a new variant that is entirely, or almost, dwarf. Good luck. For me, I'm happy to grow any JM, and am particularly thrilled to have found that one of my seedlings, given just the right light characteristics, produces pure white leaves with just a light green veining. I am just hoping I can get it grafted when it gets a little bigger.
I know what you are saying and you get no argument from me. The problem is that we have so many others that have not worked with plants hands on to really know some of the ins and outs of what can happen. We can read of Al Fordham’s work with witches broom Pines but who all has gone to the next step to find out if any of those Pines yielded viable seed and if so, how many seedlings were also a witches broom and for how widespread and how long did they have the rounded tips? All I've ever said is there is a difference between a broom and a witches broom from my experience with a few plants also. I questioned someone in this forum, not to his liking either I bet, that it could be argued that none of his proposed witches broom Pines were a witches broom at all but were what Harold Hillier called Pygmies instead. It gets back to an old discussion I had with another member of this forum that a dwarf form had to stay a dwarf for it to be called a dwarf (Hillier) and not later see that dwarf form become a semi-dwarf and still be able to call it a dwarf (Welch). Then to make Murray upset with me how is it possible that seedlings grown from a non grafted dwarf form can yield 22 footers in 25 years as in the case of Pinus nigra 'Hornibrookiana', seedlings grown on by the way from his Pine. To say that the genomes of the semi-dwarfs are the same as the as the dwarf form broom plants is being quite generous. Certainly in phenotype they are not the same as the parent plants. As far as the Butterfly of yours it is quite common for grafted and non grafted Butterfly progeny to yield return growth that not only is not variegated but there is also a subtle difference in leaf size and leaf shape as well. It is prudent to trim out all of the non variegated growth as there is a risk factor that the entire tree can become non variegated over time. I've seen it happen even in cutting grown Butterfly and Roseomarginatum from trees with no history of being grafted in their backgrounds. I've also seen a progeny plant of the same line of Roseomarginatum yield a limb sport of which the serrations and the cutting in the lobes were entirely different than the parent plant as well. The unique thing about this sport was the seed gathered from only the sport were germinated and grown on that yielded only about 5-10% variegated seedlings resembling the sport. The rest of the seedlings were all green and after three years of remaining all green were used as Summer budding rootstocks. Well done John. Jim
I am not overly concerned about discussions of dwarf vs semi-dwarf. I will leave that to those who want to put everything in its proper box. I'm content to keep my JM's in pots and planters. Regarding seeds, where do you think the dwarfs came from? I can't say about pines, but I know that with fruit trees, they are often gotten by seeing how large the plants grow i the first few years, and continuing to cross them. But regardless of how complete a dwarf you get, all you need is a random fertilization from a normal tree and you can end up with a normal sized tree. So I expect that the Picea Abies "Pusch" in my back yeard may cross with my neighbor's full-sized Norway Spruce, or with my Picea Abies Crusita, or Picea Abies Aurea and the resulting seedlings maybe having both red cones and red needles in spring, or grow 50 feet tall, or have a spruce with yellow needles and red cones on the ends of its branches - from the time it is 5 inches tall. These are extreme examples, but I think you get it. You've stayed with the rest of my rambling, so I'm sure you do. Regarding brooms, I'm really not clear on what you're talking about. The WB is an accursed part of the plant - where its growth is stunted, twisted, or otherwise distorted. But what the H__ is the other broom? I can only think of the Scotch Broom, and I'm sure you're not talking about it.
The 6 Acer circinnatum 'WB Hoyt' seeds I started this thread with all germinated Spring 2011 and I am watching the 6 seedlings. 1 of them has produced 2nd and 3rd sets of leaves much much smaller than the 1st set. Palmatum witches brooms often produce new leaves much much smaller than the older leaves on the tree. None of my palmatum witches brooms seeded this year. I am asking forum colleagues to check their witches brooms now to see if any have seeds. Remember to make sure the tree has the WB characteristic of a shorter CENTER lobe on its leaves and that this characteristic is true for MANY of the tree's leaves not just a few. Pay especial attention to any circinnatum witches brooms you might have because yesterday I noticed after a careful examination the 'WB Hoyt' has AGAIN this year produced 2 seeds which amazed me. So please let me know if any forum colleagues have witches broom seeds this year. Thank you all!
