Breeding Black Locusts (*Robinia spp.*) for Edible flowers!

I think permaculture is great. I also think a lot of people who promote it are NOT great.

3 Likes

I see, this is easier in squash when crossing small pepo seeds with huge maxima seed, since pollen creates the embyro & embyro affects the size of the seed, you just pick out the bigger seeds. I even noticed F2 Hybrid Tomato seeds from grocery store have different seed sizes but maybe that’s just genes reshuffling after F1.
Probbably harder to tell apart on Robinia cuz the seedcoat is maternal material right? I know in beans it is but still don’t fully understand how people get different colored seeds inside 1 bean pod & separate those out as hybrids.

Yes I knew it! Other hybridization barriers exist hence the Mentor Pollination & Mentor Grafting can help overcome some of them, Particularly more easily if photogenically close right?

How does it happen then? Are mutations just spontaneous fun surprises?

Unreduced Gamete? Like the Triploid didn’t get fully circuluated?

Ah like the 60 vs 90 Chromosome Diospyros virginia right? Is that how seedless cultivars of American Persimmon were made? by crossing those mis-matching chromosomes? Does this also imply that the Ancestors of Asian Persimmon (Diospyros kaki) also had wild species with different chromosomes thus created the seedless cultivars of D. kaki?

Wise words! I have no Land to grow anything on thus I can only test my theories thru other gardeners with land willing try them. I did try gardening on abandoned parking lots but everything got sprayed so couldn’t test my theory, tried in open Forrest by deer ate everything :sob:.

Back to Researching & Seed Collecting, might as well get the basics out the way so I can hit the floor running when I do get Land.

Corn is a good example but is this only because Corn doesn’t have a Seedcoat like Teosinte? Seedcoat is maternal material right? That’s why you can’t tell hybrid seeds inside a bean pod until F2 (Unless embyro size difference)?

I wonder why? Is regenerative agriculture the better less triggering term?

I watch a lot of Permaculture channels but I’m starting to suspect I live under a rock, which are not the great people promoting it?

1 Like

Seedless cultivars of persimmon don’t really exist, rather what’s happening is a lack of pollination. Persimmons are parthenocarpic so they will make fruit no matter what. Like chickens, they will lay even if there is no rooster, but as the eggs don’t get fertilized, they will never hatch. It’s the same with “seedless” persimmon – if you have a female 60n with a male 90n = fruit but no seeds. And vice versa.

What complicates this picture is that many persimmons, being polygamodioecious, can also be selfing, although with less fertility that way than through cross-pollination. So for a “seedless” persimmon, you need a less bisexual, more outcrossing individual, too.

“Northern” American persimmon is 90n (D. virginiana for now, until we split) and so is D. kaki, and it’s thought that 90n americans and 90n asians share some alleles, at least one, which are not found in the 60n american persimmon. This means kaki and northern vir. shared a common ancestor when those populations were still in contact. So, likely 16 million years ago at least during the early Miocene before the Laurasian divorce.

If true, this also means 60n and 90n american persimmons have been separated for possibly as much time.

The thinking is that asian and american persimmons emerged from a common ancestor which was 30n, and seems to have died out, but we don’t know when. Sympatric speciation. So after the Laurasian split, that 30n species could have continued to live for a few million years maybe into the late Pliocene, in one continent or the other (NA vs. East Asia). Just a wild ass guess though. In which case it could have acted as a bridge, where found, between 60n and 90n occassionally allowing some genetic exchange between the two otherwise separate populations. If that 30n ancestor survived into North America until recently, it could explain why 60n and 90n american persimmons can appear quite similar sometimes.

Genetic sequencing data once it is released will better answer these issues.

4 Likes

Oh very interesting, I just wonder where & how the parthenocarpic trait showed up?

Very interesting, I just assumed when Foraging for Wild American Persimmons that the species was dioecious, requiring both Male & Female Trees to be present. I was hoping grafting male branches into females & vice versa would solve this issue.

Very Very interesting, I can’t wait for Genetic Sequencing data to be relased to give us a clearly picture.

Imagine finding a living specimen of 30n persimmon. I feel like it might be found in Asia.

Many other species of Diospyros are diploid.

A few for example:
image
From

Diospyros is an absolutely massive genus, something like 700 species in it. Not all have persimmon as a common name (most don’t tbh), but common names aren’t particularly useful a lot of times.

I doubt you’d be able to find a diploid American or Japanese persimmon though. Both species are mostly dioecious in the wild and have pretty high levels of polyploidy, even if a diploid happened to exist, it’d probably never set fertile seed, so if you went looking for it, you’d need a time machine most likely.

2 Likes

Very very interesting that D. lotus has 30 chromosome. I just wonder how a 3 species cross (D. virginiana x D. kaki x D. lotus) happened.
For example the cultivar Virginskaya (1948) is a D. virginiana × D. kaki × D. lotus.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/286345847_INTRODUCTION_BREEDING_AND_USE_OF_PERSIMMON_SPECIES_DIOSPYROS_SPP_IN_UKRAINE

Like how!? How did the ploidy stack up like that? (Not sure if that cultivar makes seeds tho)
It kind of makes me want to worry about ploidy that much if the plants figure it out somehow.

Indeed, it’s so big it’s like a Tribe of it’s own :sweat_smile:.

How would you even ID them? Both plodiy levels are the same exact species & without a micro-scope it’s impossible.