A Cultured Tissue: A Story of Overcoming

As with the start of every new year, there's that familiar bittersweet feeling as the years shift from present to past. With all new things there is hope! So like many others this year I will be making a New Year’s resolution I have no plans of fulfilling and, of course, I’ve decided to share it with you. This year I’ve decided to begin dabbling in tissue culture.

Now tissue culture might sound a bit Frankenstein-y, but I assure you it’s not. Tissue culture is the process of creating a genetic clone in an artificial, nutrient-rich environment to encourage leaf, stem, and root growth from a plant cutting. This is different from propagation as for most plants a node or growth point is required to produce a clone. A leaf without a node, grown in a tissue culture medium is able to produce roots, shoots, and stems because of artificial hormones which tell cytokinins to switch cell division from leaf cells to root and stem cells! Now if that sounds complicated that's because it is, and I myself do not fully understand it. That's why I, once again, encourage you to do your own research if tissue culture interests you. 

The reason I would like to get into tissue culture is not because of its cool scientific applications but rather because all my dream plants are variegated and insanely expensive. A quick rundown of variegation is when a plant produces differently colored areas on leaves and stems due to a lack of chlorophyll. This can occur naturally as seen in Epipremnum aureum, street name Golden Pothos, or artificially, using tissue culture and heavy exposure to radiation as seen with the Thai Constellation. Artificially formed variegation using man-made methods often creates beautiful plants, like the Aglaonema pictum tricolor or the Pink Watsoniana, but these mutations are often highly unstable, leading to the plant reverting to its natural state or producing too much variegation and suffering due to its lack of chlorophyll. This is all to say, variegation is beauty, but also a pain in the behind because as a wonderful plant parent you must watch your mutant children like hawks. 

With the introduction of tissue culture, variegated plants have become more accessible! This is because you only need a small snippet of a plant to produce thousands of babies, allowing for less expensive variegated plants. After a quick Google search, I learned that a tissue cultured Monstera Albo goes for about $19-60, an established Monstera Albo on the other hand goes for, at the cheapest, around $200-500. That's a huge difference and totally a steal in my book, but the scary part is when you get your tissue cultured plant in the mail and it comes in a small plastic bag suspended in sticky gel. Before the plant was living with you, it received the perfect fertilization, lighting, heat, and humidity, then it was put in a dark box and opened up in a grungy bedroom and placed in soil with no humidity or grow lights. So to prevent the plant from dying of stress, you gotta pamper the little guy, and I personally think neglect is the best parent. Therefore tissue culture and I will likely not be starlit lovers, but alas, I want to give it a try when I have more time.

I hope the start of spring semester is not too daunting, but if it is, remember summer is right around the corner! I could not be more excited for the coming months as I will be able to write about all the random nifty plants that will soon satiate the rumbling of my tummy. Spring is a great time for foraging so I hope more people will step out into the great outdoors and perhaps take a bite of a magnolia or wood sorrel! Have a wonderful first month of spring semester from that floppy guy at the car dealership.