Plant Expert to Talk About Matchmaking

Because horticulturalist Dave Lannom brings a career’s worth of plant experience, he will be prepared for whatever topics his audience may want to learn more about when he addresses members and guests at the Pacific Palisades Garden Club meeting on Monday, February 2 at 7:30 p.m. The Garden Club meets at the Woman’s Club, 901 Haverford.   Lannom, a professor at Mt. San Antonio College for 27 years, will explore plant propagation, with examples and printed materials. He will also take questions on horticultural topics.   Most plants reproduce more of their kind through production of seeds. This is sexual propagation involving the exchange of genetic material between two parent plants. Many ornamental plants do not come ‘true’ from seed. To increase the numbers of these plants, gardeners and horticulturists use asexual propagation, a process in which new plants are genetically exact copies or clones of a single parent plant. The methods used in asexual propagation range from taking leaf cuttings from African violets to grafting apple cuttings onto rootstocks.   ’I’ll mention cuttings briefly, especially grafting, because it’s exciting,’ Lannom tells the Palisadian-Post. ‘It’s kind of a lost art. For example, that’s what gives you to ability to have several varieties of fruit on one tree.    ‘Sexual propagation, the romantic part of breeding in ornamentals, only makes up 12 to 15 percent,’ he continues. ‘More has been done breeding ornamentals in the last 20 years to achieve certain characteristics. We breed for smog resistance and for qualities that have come back into favor, such as fragrance in roses.’   In addition, Lannom says that companies like to specialize in new introductions that have become popular mainly through skillful marketing. He sites the company Proven Winners that ‘brings back old plants your grandmother used to grow, such as ‘Parrot’s Beak,’ (lotus vine), renamed today ‘Amazon Sunset,” he says.   Other expanded varietals include the coral bells. There has been an amazing amount of breeding in last five years with coral bells (heuchera), which come in a range of colors, shapes and sizes.’   Lannom started working in a nursery at the age of nine and graduated from Cal Poly with a B.S. degree in horticulture and a master’s degree in agricultural science. Although now semi-retired, he still teaches several classes a semester, including his favorite, basic horticulture.