Be a Good Sport

By Carol Hess

 You have acquired a leaf of a plant that you loved, but when the plantlet reached the flowering stage, the plant was not what you expected. There was a change in blossom color or the leaves were different. Your first thought might be that the leaf was incorrectly labeled. But many African violets are unstable and can “sport” or mutate. Approximately one in every one hundred leaf propagations will produce a plant radically different than the parent.

What is a sport? Jeff Smith of AVSA defines a sport as “an unexpected mutation from a leaf propagation that results in changes in the plant’s physical appearance.” I propagated a leaf of B-Man’s Etna and grew three of the plantlets. This plant is described in First Class as single medium pink ruffled blossom with purple fantasy and medium green, quilted leaves. Two plants grew as described, the third had single blue flowers. All three plants were grown under the same conditions.

What is not a sport? The plant that had fantasy flowers at the last blooming and now the blossoms are a solid color, or the variegated leaf that has changed to all green. These changes are likely due to stressful changes in growing conditions or culture. Unfortunately, once a plant changes it will not normally change back when the stress is removed.

Sporting is not always a bad thing. Many of today’s violets were mutations that occurred naturally. The first double blossom, ‘Duchess’ was a natural sport of ‘Blue Boy’. The first white, ‘White Lady’ was a sport, as was ‘Tommie Lou’ introduced in 1959 with its variegated foliage. Sporting has also produced girl foliage, chimeras and yellow colored flowers.

You have determined that your new offspring is a sport. Are the differences in this new plant a marked improvement over the original? Is the blossom color unusual, multicolored, or have a chimera pattern? Is there an abundance of flowers? Are the leaves different in shape and color such as chimera variegated? If you think this new plant deserves recognition and you would like to register it with AVSA, it should be propagated through three generations to prove it will continue to maintain the new characteristics. My sport is a pretty plant but does not demonstrate anything new and exciting. It won’t be entered in our show nor registered with AVSA, but its flowers will brighten my plant shelf while other show plants are disbudded.

In the March/April 09 issue of AVM in response to the question of where sports and mutants should be entered into a show, Bill Foster's reply was "The Handbook states that sports and mutants must be entered into the class for new cultivars. However, any sport or mutant that is simply a solid color version of a two-tone or multicolor of an existing multicolor or two-tone variety will have 5 points deducted immediately for no improvement over existing varieties."