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Sports: Blessing or Curse?


​By Bill Chaney La Pine, Oregon
First published in the African Violet Society of America magazine

Sports are plants (or sometimes only a part of a plant) that are different from the original. If you have paid good money to buy a leaf on eBay and the resulting babies produce a plant that has blooms quite different from what you expected, it can be a big disappointment. However, if the blooms are beautiful and different from the original, you might be fortunate enough to have a sport that can be propagated or even introduced.​
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Photo of Kilauea showing normal chimera blooms on the left and a blue and white chimera sport on the right. Photo by Erna Berko and used with permission.
About Sports
All plants grow by cell division. When cells divide, they must produce a copy of their chromosomes. Sometimes during this process, a mistake occurs. All cells that divide and grow from this cell with the altered chromosomes will have that same alteration. Most often, that change in the chromosomes affects some part of the plant that is never noticed. But sometimes that change in the chromosomes causes a change in the bloom or leaf. We call the plant (or affected plant part) a sport.
Some plants produce sports more often than others and some plants produce the same sport on multiple ​occasions.
 The AVSA maintains a list of registered sports and the variety from which they originated. If you study this list, you will notice that most of the sports seem to be discovered by the hybridizer of the original variety. That is because the hybridizer is likely to have propagated more plants than anyone else. Sports are part of a natural phenome­non that occurs at a very low frequency, so the more plants you propagate, the more likely you will encounter a sport.
Sport Growers
There is a person on the list who has discovered and named more sports than anyone else. His name is Stan Ko and he lives in Hong Kong. Stan has re-ported that he propagates plants from leaves in the normal fashion, but he chooses the smallest and weakest baby plants and subjects them to stressful conditions to shock them and encourage sports. He grows these tiny, weak plants at higher-than-normal temperatures and in a more acidic medium than normal. Stan has seen up to 20 percent of these babies grow to be sports.
One of the most commonly seen types of flower variations in sports is a chimera pattern. In a chimera bloom, often one portion of the petal is missing the color that was seen previously across the entire
Sport Growers
There is a person on the list who has discovered and named more sports than anyone else. His name is Stan Ko and he lives in Hong Kong. Stan has re-ported that he propagates plants from leaves in the normal fashion, but he chooses the smallest and weakest baby plants and subjects them to stressful conditions to shock them and encourage sports. He grows these tiny, weak plants at higher-than-normal temperatures and in a more acidic medium than normal. 
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Stan has seen up to 20 percent of these babies grow to be sports.
One of the most commonly seen types of flower variations in sports is a chimera pattern. In a chimera bloom, often one portion of the petal is missing the color that was seen previously across the entire petal, or the color of the petal becomes concentrated in a stripe in the center of the petal. Jere Trigg of Alabama has introduced many beautiful standard varieties, and several are chimeras (see photos).​
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Jere's Chantilly Lace (top) and its sport (bottom), a chimera named Jere's Star Burst. Photos by Jere Trigg
​Not All Sports Are Chimeras
Certainly not all sports are a chimera pattern. They do usually involve a loss of color or even a change in color. Jere produced a beautiful seedling of Jere's Roll Tide x Powder Keg that has a solid red sticktite star bloom with attractive foliage. He has named it Jere's Frankly Scarlett. 
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Jere's Frankly Scarlett (top) and its sport Jere's Serendipity. Photos by Jere Trigg
During the normal leaf prop­agation of this variety, an attractive sport emerged with a "tie-dyed" appearance, which he has named Jere's Serendipity.
​

Some sports, like chimeras, cannot be propagated from leaf cuttings like most varieties. This is because the genetic modification that causes the altered flower color pattern is only present in the parts of the plants that directly lead to the bloom, such as the bloom stalk. These varieties can only be propagated by using the bloom stalk or from suckers on the plant. In either method, the chance of getting a true blooming chimera is high, but there is no guarantee.

Bloom-Stalk Propagation
Bloom-stalk propagation can be accomplished by rooting the bloom stalk in a fashion similar to rooting a leaf. A new plant arises from either the base of the bloom stalk or sometimes from the axil of the tiny leaflet on the bloom stalk. It is also possible to encourage platelets to form in the leaf axils by using a plant hormone.

The hormone group that causes these platelets (cytokinins) to form is different from the rooting hormone with which many gardeners are familiar. One such cytokinin is called 6-benzylaminopurine (BAP) and it is a synthetic growth hormone that stimulates cell division and the formation of shoots. It is often used by orchid growers in propagation and is sometimes sold as Keiki cloning paste.

​A grower must scratch or insert the cloning paste into the tissue of the leaf axil while the bloom stalk is still on the plant. The developing shoots can be removed and rooted when they are large enough to handle (see photos below).
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A bloom stalk being treated with BAP. Photo Erno Berko
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The resulting babies it produced. Photo Erno Berko
Sometimes a sport will occur at a point in the plant that results in a single bloom stalk that exhibits a chimera pattern. If that bloom stalk is not propa­gated, that chimera sport could be lost forever. Bloom-stalk propagation can also  be extremely useful in those situations in which a valued chimera plant is reverting to its non-chimera form. Propa­gating a bloom stalk that is still showing the chimera pattern can often ​ produce a true-blooming chimera plant.
Whether a sport is a blessing or a curse depends on your goal, but like hybridizing, having a unique plant is exciting. So, the next time you are potting up babies, before throwing away those tiny weak ones, consider giving them a little shock. Place them in a warmer spot or make their mix a little extra acidic, and hope that you end up with a beautiful sport. And if you spot a bloom stalk with a decidedly different bloom that you like, give bloom-stalk propagation a try.
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Separated babies transfered to a common pot
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These babies were separated
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Then a tray after rooting. All Photos by Erno Berko
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