Gata, Yes, what The Mohave Kid said. For a specific example, if you were to hand pollinate two heirloom tomatoes, those seeds would produce an F1 hybrid tomato that would be uniform and maybe better than either parent variety, so you might like your F1 hybrid a lot. But if you were to save seed from your new F1 tomato, those seeds would be F2 seeds (second generation seeds) and all sorts of recombinations of characteristics would occur and very few, if any, would be like your F1 hybrid. Some might be very weird and possibly, if you grew a lot of them, you might find one very similar to your original F1 hybrid. You could even conceivably find a recombination that was even somewhat better then your F1 hybrid. If you want to grow more of your F1 hybrid tomato, without recombining vast numbers of different combinations of the two parent's different characteristics, you need only to repeat the cross using the original "pure" heirloom strains. Or, as an alternative, you could simply grow cuttings from your original F1 hybrid cross. If you had a lot of space to grow thousands of tomatoes, you could stabilize a new open pollinated version of your F1 hybrid by growing enough F2s to find a single plant much like the F1, saving as many seed as possible from that plant (you could even multiply it by cuttings to increase that seed yield) and then grow a lot of F3s from that specific selection. Then look through all of your F3 tomatoes for one or two plants very similar to what you are trying to stabilize. The F3s will still be showing a lot of new variations, but they will be more noticeably related to the self pollinated F2 individual that you selected. You will be filling compost piles with tomato plant rejects. You may find only one acceptable plant in a thousand or ten thousand. But each new generation, from F3 to F4 to F5 and so on, will show more convergence toward your desired new tomato, provided you ruthlessly select only the best for the seed of your next generation. By repeating this for several generations you will have stabilized an open pollinated version of your original F1 hybrid tomato. If you were growing lots of plants in each generation and keeping only the very best it is conceivable that your stabilized variety could be even better than your original F1 hybrid variety. (And you will have created a mountain of rejected tomato vine compost as a by-product.) So now you would have a stable superior tomato that you could cross with some other open pollinated variety to create a wholly new F1 hybrid tomato, and the madness could begin again. As you see, it is really much easier simply to repeat making the original cross to produce more F1 hybrid seed than it is to save and grow very many seeds from them in a multi-year effort to stabilize the new tomato as an open-pollinated version. Some F1 hybrid seeds are expensive because hand pollination may be required. Some F1 hybrid seeds cost less because they have found a way to make the cross without hand labor or with much less hand labor (or with cheaper hand labor overseas.) For example, economical F1 hybrid corn is produced by lopping off the tassels of the plants of the "female" variety to prevent self pollination. These female plants are grown in rows alternating with the "male" variety which gets to retain its tassels. The wind just carries the pollen from the tassels of the male variety to the silks of the female variety and F1 hybrid seed between those two varieties is produced on the cobs of the female variety very inexpensively. I hope that explains how F1 hybrid vegetable seed produce uniform plants. They are uniform because each has the same set of pure-strain parents. Incidentally, if you have the space to grow quite a few plants, plant breeding can be an interesting hobby. MM

There are two lists which may be helpful regarding hosta ploidy. One list is titled Polyploid Hostas. This is a list of the many cultivars which are commonly assumed to be polyploid (i.e., more than diploid). However, not all cultivars which are often thought to be polyploidy necessarily are. For example, 'Blue Mouse Ears' was originally thought to be tetraploid. Testing conducted by Dr. Ben Zonneveld using flow cytometry concluded that BME was merely diploid. The other list titled Hostas Analyzed by Flow Cytometry is probably a more reliable indicator of the ploidy because this is a list of hostas of cultivars which have been tested. (Please note: there is some debate on whether the method of flow cytometry is a suitable method for determining ploidy.) It should be noted that hostas most commonly are diploid...i.e., they have two sets of chromosomes. Some, however, have three sets (triploid), four sets (tetraploid), or even six sets (hexaploid). Others may have a combination of ploidy (as Steve said)...diploid in some layers, while triploid or tetraploid or hexaploid in other layers. This condition is referred to as a "ploidy chimera". And lastly, a few cultivars may be missing some chromosomes in one or more layers. These are referred to as aneuploids. This is probably a lot more information than what you really need to know. Diploids, triploids, tetraploids, and aneuploids can all be cross-pollinated with each other...and there is no definitive answer to what the ploidy of the offspring will be. Generally, however, the pollen sacs on tetraploids are much larger than those on diploids, making them more difficult (but not impossible) to use for cross pollinating with other cultivars.

Firstly, a quick search shows there are NO patented Passiflora in the US, nor have any patents been filed for any. In the US at least, a plant patent only applies to a single genotype and its identical clones. All seedlings of patented plants are completely free of any restrictions on propagation, provided they are different in any way. Some seedlings are apomictic, which would be identical "clones", and they would still be protected by the patent. Not only can you patent the seedlings as your own, but even a bud sport of a patented variety can be patented as something new, provided it has some observable or measurable difference. You are completely free to do as you wish with your seedlings. Just curious which "sterile" variety it is? ~kiwinut

Hi Alex, If you don't get a response here, you might try posting this same query over in the Daylilies forum Nice looking seedlings. ZM