Landscape plants are highly diverse and nursery producers often grow thousands of taxa to satisfy the varied needs and aesthetic tastes of consumers. Related to this diversity, ornamental plant breeders must be nimble and diverse in their approach. Two seemingly disparate studies were conducted to investigate improving ornamental shrubs –...
Buddleja davidii (butterfly bush) is a highly adaptable landscape plant known for pollinator attraction. Unfortunately, it is also regarded as an invasive plant in highly disturbed environments across the globe. It is an invasive species in Oregon, officially classified as a class B noxious weed in 2004. Currently the state...
Oregon State University campus grounds have long been admired for their beauty and the diversity of over 65,000 individual woody plants that grace the 570 acres of campus. The woody plant collection has provided a living learning laboratory for the university and surrounding community for decades. The campus grounds include...
Cotoneaster is an ornamental shrub valued for showy flowers, berries and architecture as well as the ability tolerate adverse conditions under which other taxa fail. Cotoneaster is a highly diverse genus of over 400 species, of which few are available in the US nursery trade. Some species commercially available have...
The common cherrylaurel (Prunus laurocerasus) and Portuguese cherrylaurel (P. lusitanica) are economically important landscape shrubs across the United States. To gain a better understanding of physiology and morphology in these higher level polyploids (P. lusitanica, 2n = 8x; P. laurocerasus, 2n =22x), a variety of breeding experiments were performed. The...
Hereditary variation is a vital component in the development of new and improved cultivars of landscape plants. Sources of hereditary variation include naturally occurring variation, recombination due to controlled crosses, artificial mutagenesis, and genetic modification via biotechnology. Here I explore all methods with the exception of genetic modification via biotechnology....
Forest management requires classification of forest stands into groupings or types based on structural similarities, even when structure varies continuously along gradients. Managed, mixed-species, multi-aged forest stands often display complex structures containing extreme variation in trees size, density, and species composition, and as a result have diverse canopy structures. A...
Successful cryopreservation of bone marrow in situ within vertebral bodies offers an opportunity for quick and convenient storage of a significant quantity of bone marrow stem cells, including hematopoietic- and mesenchymal-type stem cells. However, cryopreservation of more complex large tissues and organs, such as the vertebral body (VB), remains problematic....
Perennial ryegrass (PRG, Lolium perenne) is a hardy cool-season grass that is infected with the endophytic fungus Neotyphodium lolii, which enables the plant to be insect repellant and drought resistant, lowering the use of insecticides and fertilizers. However, this fungus produces the compound lolitrem B (LB, m/z 686.4) which causes...
