please don’t open that can of worms again :sushing_face:
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Short answer, “No”. Long answer, “Neither, exactly”.
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Why? It is fairly straight forward
Not true, Most trees live thousands of years before you cannot propagate them. All trees retain there true clonal age. Say you started a tree from seed in 1700 and through the years grafted or air layered new trees. Today whatever you have from that tree would be 319 years old. No getting around this. Eventually enough mutation will occur to cause it die. Mutations occur in normal mitosis. Most trees seem to last at least 5000 years. here is an example of how clonal age is changing a group of trees.
So we should be able to clone almost anything indefinitely over and over again through are measly short lifespan.
An individual tree life depends on environment. Like most say peaches last 25 years. Although we have peach trees in China and the far east that are very old.
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Thank you for all that knowledge!
By indefinitely I meant eternity, not just our lifetime.
OK, well for between 5 and 10 thousand years, longer in some cases. But no not forever. Clonal age will kill all cultivars one day. Sexual reproduction is needed to keep a species fresh.
that’s my belief as well if growing on own roots and in the absence of diseases.
serial grafting to juvenile rootstock seems to delay senescence , or-- on an optimistic viewpoint-- a perpetuating approach to eternity. Been extremely curious about serially grafting buwood of determinate tomato on indeterminate tomato rootstock to see if this would considerably extend the productive lifespan of the determinate tomato grafts(or perhaps make them relatively immortal), but never had the chance nor the conditions to try it.
With the rate at which genetic engineering is progressing I would be very surprised if clonal age will still be an issue in a few more decades.
In fact I suspect “cultivars” will be almost like recipes in the future where you will be able to select the specific traits you want in your plants before you order them.
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Maybe, I myself doubt it. Maybe in 200 years. Most DNA we have no clue what it does. We hardly know anything about DNA at this point. Well we know a lot but with every advancement, we discover another 100 things we don’t know. Like Hemoglobin is a huge molecule with thousands of amino acids that are coded by 3 different genes. We know sickle cell is a mutation of the 6th amino acid on the beta chains of hemoglobin We have no clue as to how to fix the error or where the error is at in the DNA. We have so much further to go. I would say we only have a very basic knowledge of how DNA works. So far we learned to insert DNA via a virus. We have to harvest the DNA we cannot sequence it ourselves. We are not even close to repairing DNA at all.
The reason we age, our skin becomes looser and we get wrinkles and all, are from replication errors. The DNA is flawed now with thousands of mutations. It’s like a xerox and we take the copy and photocopy again, take that copy and photo copy again and so on. It losses quality with every copy of a copy. Same with our genes. Same with all living genes in all things alive. Maybe we will discover a cure for aging in plants, but I doubt it will come anytime soon.
Sexual reproduction restarts the cycle… Starting new trees via clones does not, the wood knows how old it is and will continue to age. That article I posted on the Aspen trees explains the process very well. For those trying to understand why clonal age matters, that article explains all.
Woman produce eggs about till 50 years of age, but by 40 the genes are so mutated they will no longer produce a viable egg or very few of them, often with flaws still. Why 40 year olds have a higher percentage of children with genetic flaws like Downs syndrome. Too many genetic mutations in the DNA that codes for new eggs during the menstrual cycle.
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Hey Alcedo how is your airlayered peaches doing since you posted these pictures in 2016?
Curious for an update…
I am considering airlayering peach and almond to proppagate cultivars through root suckers later.
Some of the debate in this thread had me concerned but I imagine airlayering is a good idea since some clonal peach/almond rootstocks are used in the commercial industry.
How long has clonal peach rootstock been around and has it proven the age of mother tree theory wrong yet?
Isnt the main advantage between clonal rootstock and seedling the taproot?
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Some would freak out at the concept, but I think that would be awesome.
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I think Alcedo passed away a couple years ago.bb
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Oh my thats sad…
I guess that brings it closer to home that nothing in this life is forever…
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It’s not a great picture, but I tried out the technique of slicing into a branch and attaching a bag of water to the partially detached bit (there was a video someone shared a while back that shows how). I was surprised to see roots forming in just a little over a week. Pretty excited that it worked so well.
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This was in 1 week?
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I think it was about a week until I first saw roots, then three weeks when I cut it. But time’s been hazy in the days of quarantine. So, I just set two more today with the same method and will keep better track.
Hi
I air layered a Chinese cyprus tree in August. They still look green. It is freezing out now, Zone 5. I wanted to leave them in place thru the winter. Is it ok to freeze the new roots like that in the air layers?
I am not a botanist but I would think that it is NOT okay. Roots are not as hardy as bark covered branches and trunks.
Mike
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Is anyone interested in testing out a 3D printed design I came up with for air layering?
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I’m curious.
I’d love to try it. What size is it?
Scott