+/-, it maybe thousand of years of cultivation before a group of
plants will prove unfit to survive in the wild again. Many of the
same pressures are still present in cultivation. You still have
pests, and if you grow lots of plants, competition for light.
I'm growing southern species very far north. None of these have
died in what amounts to local wild conditions. So I can't really
say there's much pressure to evolve, at least for my N.American CP's.
This, inspite of the fact some come from over five hundred miles
further south of here.
> Dave Evans expressed the thought that 'Even a very small population
> can become very different from other populations within only several
> generations' - can anyone put some sort of figure on any instances of
> the number of generations?
Ok, here's what I meant, Sorry for being less than clear on this
important subject. If you take a small number of individauls
out of a given population and sexaully progate them you will get
new population that shows marked differences. This is because
the original population has a number of "dominant" traits that
may be shown in all or most of it's members. Now, all the plants
will have some less "dominant" traits NOT shared by all members
so when these are seperated from the rest these traits come become
dominant, or more visible (to the genetic eye, if you will) of
the new population. This is not evolution nor is it a loss of
much diversity, just a re-shuffling of the deck. In this way,
my population of plants will become more different since a much
different % of my plants will have certain characteristics than
the colony they came from. As will John's plants in Arizona be
different than mine and the original population. Ahh, getting
that cleared up feels so good.
Anyway, it would probably take a very long, long time before
evolution makes cultivated plants unsuited for the wild (not
counting hybrids, sports and other wierdies like that; and
natural selection would make fast work of them anyway.) Now, if
we can only ensure that there will be somewhere wild in a couple
thousand years!
Dave Evans