so this is my Anthurium Ace Velvet X Dark Forgetii (1st pic, excuse her appearance, been treating for mites). when I repotted her last year, I cut an offset from the base & propagated it separately (2nd pic). as you can see the pup has grown up to look very different from its mother. the foliage is darker, sinus is narrower, & it lacks silver veining.
is this a common thing? everything I’ve read has told me that offsets are always genetically identical to the mother. super interesting to see parent traits come out so differently in both plants!
by Vegetable_Oil_3504
2 Comments
Same as you. Everything I know about them is that an offset is the same. Can they mutate? Did the mother plant look that way before it matured, maybe? Were they grown in the same conditions? Sorry for all the questions. It’s just really curious!
it doesn’t seem to be common knowledge but no, they aren’t always identical. in a plant, the apical growth point typically has the closest genetics to the original cell line. anything that isn’t that original growth point is essentially a copy of a copy, and some slight differences can occur for a variety of reasons. here’s a [video tour](https://youtu.be/l-TBZeqGF5c?&t=588) of a tissue culture facility where this is briefly discussed.
harvesting apical tissue is relevant for them because they’re trying to create very uniform clones of the original plant. but in nature this is not what happens. a new growth point could end up looking different because environmental conditions are promoting or silencing certain genes at the time of creation. a random mutation could happen and give that cell line a different trait, the list goes on and on. most of the time you do pretty much end up with a “clone” of the original plant. but in my experience, with complex hybrids especially, you can end up with a cutting that grows totally different looking to the parent plant, even when they’re both growing in the exact same conditions.
it doesn’t happen every time, but it happens often enough that Ive started to take cuttings just to try and “re-roll” the dice on the traits of that plant 🤣 hoping for a flatter sinus, more color, more primary veins, etc.