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Smith researchers clone rare wildflower

Anna Newman
Issue date: 3/8/07 Section: News
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Media Credit: Smith College

A Smith professor and graduate student recently cloned the Pink
Profusion wildflower.


Thanks to a Smith professor and graduate student, a rare native
wildflower will now be available to the local public to plant in
their gardens. Using a technique known as micropropagation, Professor
Michael Marcotrigiano and graduate student Arianna Bruno '05
multiplied the Pink Profusion Porteranthus.

According to the Mount Cuba Center, this pink version of a normally
off-white wildflower was found in the wild by Paul James and sent to
the center in 1987. Although native to the area, the pink wildflower
is slow to multiply and thus has not been grown successfully.

Marcotrigiano collaborated with the director of the Mount Cuba Center
to propagate the Pink Profusion. Since the wildflower was more
attractive, they hoped it would also be more marketable. "It is …
part of educating the public to appreciate native flora,"
Marcotrigiano said.

Marcotrigiano and Bruno used a technique called micropropagation, a
subfield of plant tissue culture. "It involves putting small plant
pieces on synthetic media in sterile conditions and tricking the
plant into multiplying very fast by dosing it up with plant
hormones," said Marcotrigiano.

This technique is now used commercially, including by the local
Nourse Farms in Whately. The Nourse Farms, which produce strawberry
and raspberry plants in this way, are able to create thousands of
plants in their labs where they have a lower chance of catching a
virus or disease.

The project represents a larger problem in the gardening world. Flora
from other parts of the world tends to be more appealing to gardeners
than species of local flowers. However, some of the non-natives can
threaten local species by taking their sunlight, nutrients and
space. "It is important to get more native ornamentals into the trade
since a small fraction of non-natives are invasive and displace
native flora," said Marcotrigiano.

The Mount Cuba Center, which is located in Delaware, addresses this
problem by trying to foster an appreciation for native wildflowers.
They do research working with underused or difficult-to-propagate
plants. According to their Web site, their goals are "to develop a
better understanding of the factors that influence successful
propagation, growth and development and to subsequently use that
information for both horticultural and conservation purposes."

Marcotrigiano and Bruno's work was published in the journal Plant
Cell Tissue and Organ Culture. The Pink Profusion will now be
multiplied by a company and supplied to garden centers.