Stump the Forester

[metalspinner]

From my son's tissue culture collection...

Can anyone ID this tree? 😆

[WDH]

It does not have a stump to stump me. 

[Texas Ranger]

alternate soft wood, give us a year or so and we can refine our answers.  8)

[Texas Ranger]

I am impressed your son is into tissue culture, what is the back story?

[metalspinner]

Nick has always been The Science Kid. He graduates this spring with a degree in Chemistry and will be starting a doctorate in the fall. 
Tissue cultures is one of his hobbies focusing mostly on carnivorous plants. He exchanges tissue cultures with people from all over the world. 

You never know what to expect when opening the fridge in the basement. Pickles, home brew, tissue cultures, and some sort of inoculations  😂



 

[Kodiakmac]

He exchanges tissue cultures with people from all over the world. 

Better keep China off his list fir a while. :D

[RPF2509]

That sure looks like a coast redwood.  Vegetative propagation of redwood has been going on for several decades.  Since redwood does not cone often and the cones are difficult to pick, some timber companies use this method exclusively.  The propogates are genetically identical to the tissue donor so a lot of time is spent selecting the donor tree with the right characteristics.  A plantable seedling can be grown from tissue to outplanting in a season so it is a rapid process.  Cost is about 4 times greater than a tree from seed origin.

[metalspinner]

We have a winner!



 

[customsawyer]

Now I'm thinking about a salad.

[RPF2509]

So what did I win?   In any case it was easy for me as I've seen the labs where they are grown and supervised the out planting of a couple hundred thousand of them.  Its actually a simple process once the hormone chemistry is nailed down.  The cost come from the labor of handling each and every seedling.  There are currently several 'orchards' where trees with desirable characteristics have been propagated and are planted in dense rows to yield the cuttings to propagate more.  Coast redwood is one of the few conifers that are aggressive sprouters, so it was a natural choice to use this type of regeneration method.  Don't believe it if you hear people saying its going extinct.  We were aggressively pushing it into areas where it was scarce and actively searched for a more drought/ heat tolerant variety to push it further inland.  Don't believe the 'if you've seen one you've seen them all' nonsense.  U Cal Berkley has a plantation propagated from trees from across the redwood range all plated together and the differences were remarkable and easily distinguished when you saw the different trees next to each other.