You know, there’s a principle of
magic from the traditions of alchemy, or maybe sorcery: you take a little piece
of an object - like the feather of a bird - put it in the magic box, and do mysterious
processes, incantations, etc. to it. When you open the lid, voila! – Out
flutters your bird, alive and whole! That’s pretty much how the idea of growing
lilies from bud-culture seems to anyone who hears of it, so I’ve been anxious
to see how it’s done.
This was the fourth time I’ve
watched Judith Freeman’s popular
tissue-culture demonstration - the first being at the NALS 2000 International
Show, when we drove all the way up to Portland
just for that. I couldn’t stay long but I got to meet Judith and several other
“new old friends,” and while I didn’t rush home and try it for myself right
then, I did get the general idea. In subsequent years I’ve become much braver (with
Judith’s help and the encouragement of other “students”), cooking up my own
culture medium, setting up equipment and supplies, and even making my own “wide
crosses” for embryo-rescue. Judith has helped many people get started in this
way, loaning out transfer-hoods and giving information, made-up test-tubes,
sympathy and advice as needed.
Tissue-culture of lilies
basically falls into two categories - popularly known as “ER” and “TC.” These
are 1) the laboratory “rescue” of the embryo of interspecific crosses (such as
an Oriental by a trumpet lily, which normally would have nothing to do with
each other genetically - any more than a lion would with a tiger); and 2) the transformation
of various cooperative bits of lily into bulblets, on a sterile, nutritive
medium. Generally, the part that is used for TC-propagation is something that
was already a bulb – a stem or scale-bulblet, cleaned and chopped into rice-sized
pieces within a simple alcohol- sterilized, semi-enclosed environment on a
table or counter-top. Sealed in sterile (i.e. pressure-cooker-processed) test-tubes,
jam or baby-food jars of nutrient gel and stashed in a drawer or shelf for
several months to “do their thing,” a certain number of them will escape
contamination* and thrive as new bulblets.
In Vitro Bud-Culture 
This was the fourth time I’ve
watched Judith Freeman’s popular
tissue-culture demonstration - the first being at the NALS 2000 International
Show, when we drove all the way up to Portland
just for that. I couldn’t stay long but I got to meet Judith and several other
“new old friends,” and while I didn’t rush home and try it for myself right
then, I did get the general idea. In subsequent years I’ve become much braver (with
Judith’s help and the encouragement of other “students”), cooking up my own
culture medium, setting up equipment and supplies, and even making my own “wide
crosses” for embryo-rescue. Judith has helped many people get started in this
way, loaning out transfer-hoods and giving information, made-up test-tubes,
sympathy and advice as needed.
Tissue-culture of lilies
basically falls into two categories - popularly known as “ER” and “TC.” These
are 1) the laboratory “rescue” of the embryo of interspecific crosses (such as
an Oriental by a trumpet lily, which normally would have nothing to do with
each other genetically - any more than a lion would with a tiger); and 2) the transformation
of various cooperative bits of lily into bulblets, on a sterile, nutritive
medium. Generally, the part that is used for TC-propagation is something that
was already a bulb – a stem or scale-bulblet, cleaned and chopped into rice-sized
pieces within a simple alcohol- sterilized, semi-enclosed environment on a
table or counter-top. Sealed in sterile (i.e. pressure-cooker-processed) test-tubes,
jam or baby-food jars of nutrient gel and stashed in a drawer or shelf for
several months to “do their thing,” a certain number of them will escape
contamination* and thrive as new bulblets.