"Papers" for Japanese Maples ?

I have not been into collecting maples very long at all, so my overall knowledge is very limited. Reading thru forum topics and other material on Japanese Maples one concern that seems to stand out is the purity of the tree line. Has there been any instances where "papers" where given to the buyer/collector to validate the tree line? Kinda like paper on dogs/cats and such?

OR is this just weird to do?

 

hehehe
I wonder where the true line would start today?
Seems to me that only a very few could be claimed to be 'true' to enable 'papers' to be issued with any certainty
Of course, many of the sellers today would no doubt be willing to issue 'papers' with their trees if it made them a few extra pounds/dollars/euros ............

 

Animals weren't being cloned until recently, and that has only been very limited in extent. It's not even apples and oranges, but apples and beagles. With trees part of the discussion is based on whether a specimen is an example of the "true" clone or not. Some plant cultivars are clonal, others are not. How broadly or narrowly a cultivar is defined varies. With a rare, grafted (clonal) Japanese maple theoretically the originator could issue papers that went with all propagules but in practice this has not been done. The closest thing, I suppose would be patented plants that are supposed to bear labeling showing that they are patented and belong to somebody.

 

Since we're talking about beagles & such, how about the idea of inserting or implanting some kind of unique identifier like a computer chip for rare specimens?

 

In Racing Pigeons allover Europe still, pedigrees are
issued when a bird from a prominent loft is sold to
someone else. The Europeans were better, far more
efficient and trustworthy than some people were here
in the US and thus the practice almost died out here
as to the number of fanciers that would fill out and
include the parentage of their birds that were for sale
or had been sold.

Actually, the older stock plant Maples in Japan are
much more likely to be on their own roots rather than
being grafted specimens. Some of the older Japanese
Maples in Europe are on their own roots as well.

A genetic marker can be placed into the genome of a
plant, so that is not out of bounds at all. Our hope was
that in the future our DNA analysis of plants, in this case
Japanese Maples, would be such that we would be able
to have a karyotype of an old Sagara nishiki in Japan and
be able to tell how that Maple differs from a Sagara nishiki
that came out of Oregon. To my knowledge we are not
there yet. It sure would come in real handy for some of
the Maple cultivars we have now if we can agree that
through analysis we can determine enough of a difference
to be able to know which cultivar is which based on its
genetic blueprint but what happens when the Bloodgood
Maple we see sold today does not match up with the
Bloodgoods that have been in collections and arboretums
for several years? Then we would have to pinpoint "on
paper" how they are different and then wonder what may
have caused them not to be the same other than a factor
of genetic diversity that may have come into play.

What I want to know more of is how much of an influence
the rootstocks genome has in the genetic expression of
the scion and how much continual grafting has affected
the genetics of the scion parent plants we are using
today over time? This is an issue the people doing
propagation by cuttings year after year were not so much
concerned about but it was an issue to some of the people
that first were grafting Japanese Maples to duplicate them
fast to build up some numbers (backups) of these plants
as they were coming in from Japan did worry about. Which
is why after a Maple may have been cleaned up some with
a vigorous rootstock, some people went back to propagating
by cuttings again soon afterwards. The fear was that a dwarf
form that would grow to about 2 feet tall in 30 years in Japan
might start growing to 4 feet tall in 12-15 years here which
may be okay for some people but if that Maple got up to
beyond 6 feet tall in 20-25 years, then a few people would
have been hard pressed to go on calling it a dwarf form.
They would have felt that their grafting the plant changed it
from its original state into a enhanced form of the original
plant.

Jim

 

Jim,
In hostas they use a scanning electron micrograph to look for a distinguishable identifying surface texture to provide a marker for cultivar parentage. Would this be a possible means of proving parentage for maple cultivars?
Kay Dye