Variegated beauties

Come on—Be a Sport
Two variegated plant introductions with back stories as fun as their foliage
by Mary-Kate Mackey

In nature, plants sometimes spontaneously produce unusually colored foliage among the normal hues. This mild mutation is called a sport and plant breeders are always on the lookout for it. How these two variegated West Coast introductions came to the marketplace is a testament to the powerful attraction of sports.

A Traveling Sport

The first story features an eye-catching annual barley (Hordeum vulgare variegate), dubbed variegated cat grass by Alice Doyle, co-owner of the wholesale nursery Log House Plants (www.loghouseplants.com). This charming green-and-white-striped upright grass combines beautifully with annuals. It's a perfect accent for containers. And yes, Alice says that cats prefer it to over nibbling on houseplants.

But this showy annual would not be available except for the curiosity of famed plant breeder Kees Fahine. In the Netherlands, he was searching the Seed Savers Exchange Yearbook (www.seedsavers.org) for heritage beans he could bring back into production. He noticed a bean grower in the Midwestern U.S. offered some unusual barley seeds. Off the seeds went to the Netherlands, where after years of work, Kees stabilized the showy mix. Now variegated cat grass has returned to the U.S. for its West Coast debut—in great demand at Alice's Log House website.

The Sporting Life

Now zoom around the world to Japan, where Fatsia japonica ‘Spider's Web', a mounding five-foot tall evergreen shrub with white-dusted leaves, exemplifies the hybridizer's art. Hardy in Zones 7-9, it's also prime for a greenhouse. In 1989, this was a rare collector's plant. That's when Dan Heims, president of Terra Nova Nurseries, Inc. (www.terranovanurseries.com) visited Dr. Masato Yokoi, the international expert on variegated plants. In the doctor's garden, Dan spotted ‘Spider's Web'. Torn by plant fervor and strong respect for this man he thought of as his teacher, or sensei, Dan bowed deeply and asked where he could find such a plant. Dr. Yokoi laughed and told the story of how he had acquired this aralia from his teacher. He repeated the cryptic words his sensei had uttered long ago: "If you look, you will learn."

Dan looked.

At the base of the plant, a new shoot was springing up. Dan bowed even deeper, brought the offered cutting home, rooted it, and spent six years getting it into tissue culture. Now gardeners around the U.S. can enjoy it too.

So let's all take a bow to honor those who spot the sports.

Mary-Kate Mackey writes and gardens in Eugene, Oregon.

To Know more about Greenhouses and Greenhouse Gardening with Variegated beauties visit: http://hartley-greenhouses.com .