If you haven’t noticed, there’s a minor revolution occurring in the houseplant world as new hybrids of old favorites greet us each time we prowl the aisles of our local garden centers. But how do these new plants come into existence?
‘Silver Bay’ Chinese evergreen is a houseplant that’s also found wide acceptance in the Florida foliage market.
Photo Credit: Gerald L. Klingaman
One such plant to undergo a genetic transformation is the Aglaonema, or Chinese evergreen. Though there are about a hundred named introductions now listed, I’ll just focus on one: ‘Silver Bay’.
‘Silver Bay’ is a hybrid from the University of Florida’s Apopka foliage research station. It was discovered by foliage breeder Dr. Jake Henny, who has released at least six Aglaonema hybrids (among countless others). Henny’s breeding goals are to introduce larger Aglaonema plants that have unique leaf variegation patterns, good basal branching and cold tolerance. In short, he’s looking for plants that will be easy for Florida foliage growers to produce and easy for retail nurseries to sell.
Since its release in 1992, ‘Silver Bay’ has become popular in the $585 million Florida foliage industry, and it continues to enjoy success as a well-liked houseplant.
Henny was one of the first breeders to take advantage of a plant-growth hormone called gibberellic acid (GA) in a controlled breeding program. Chinese evergreens flower, but flowering is unpredictable, and with different species blooming at different seasons it was hard to make some crosses. But after a single GA spray, flowers appeared in three to four months, making it easier for the plant breeder to concentrate on this characteristic.
Once the flowers formed, Henny set out to understand how certain characteristics were inherited in Chinese evergreens. After a series of controlled crosses, he discovered the variegated leaf pattern was due to a single dominant gene. But when variegated parents with a heterozygous chromosome (not genetically uniform) makeup were used as parents, seedlings could be produced displaying variegation patterns derived from both parents. With this knowledge, he identified plant parents that would provide the various traits he was seeking.
Breeding for leaf variegation characteristics is relatively easy in Chinese evergreens because the plants show their adult variegation patterns as soon as the first leaf appears. But getting the plant out to the consumer isn’t always as easy. It takes at least a year of growing to get a feel for what growth form the plant has – and several more years of experience to know if it’s easy for horticulturists to produce – before a plant is deemed tough enough for the homeowner to grow and enjoy.
