The Garden Tour Affair: A Gardening Mystery (16 page)

As others stood in clusters and continued to talk about the death, Nora sat alone and stared at the hills, visible in the far distance between the groves of pine and hardwood trees. She neither spoke nor was spoken to, almost as if she were conducting a brief, private memorial for Jeffrey.

Bill hovered near Chris and Janie, with Teddy hanging on the edge of the group. Louise saw her husband’s arm around their daughter now, and realized he was anxious about how she would handle her first brush with death. No, not her first: her second. Louise had forgotten the mulch murder, the results of which Janie saw firsthand—the severed body parts, the blood …

Teddy approached Janie and asked, “I sure hope you’re all right.” She gave him a compassionate smile and enfolded him in the conversation, causing Chris to glower at the man who was stepping so nervily into his territory. Teddy seemed to flourish under the spell of Janie’s approval, and Louise saw that he was indeed an interesting-looking young man-could he be a man with a future in Janie’s life?

Like a father to the rescue, Bill had gone into a little monologue aimed at soothing nerves and relieving guilt: “It is shocking. The world has lost a man who was a leader in the field of plant genetics. But, Janie, terrible accidents happen sometimes. It isn’t anything that could be helped or prevented—there’s nothing you could have done …”

Janie gave him an impatient look. “Unless, of course, we’d all stayed in town and just gone on the garden tour. Look, Dad, I know all that. I’m perfectly all right, even if you think I’m not. So please stop hovering.” She turned her back on the solicitous men and grabbed Louise’s arm. “Ma, come on, let’s go upstairs. I have something important to tell you.”

G
ARDENERS MAY NOT KNOW IT, BUT
many of the plants, trees, vines, and bushes that they buy were created in a test tube. The sci-fi future of gardening is here, as millions of the plants we use are grown through
tissue culture
and new plants are designer models created by
genetic engineering
. Tissue culture creates masses of
clones
, while genetic manipulation of plants creates what are called
transgenic plants
or
transformants
. And this isn’t quite as spooky as it sounds. Tissue culture, at least, is user-friendly, and something the
curious gardener can try in the family kitchen.

Gardeners through the millennia have found many simple ways to propagate and hybridize plants to create new genetic varieties: sticking a tree branch in the ground and letting it root; dividing rhizomes, roots, and bulbs; and cross-pollinating. Today, these methods are still popular. But now, instead of laboriously growing fields full of experimental, cross-pollinated plants, the scientist can take a gene gun, shoot a desirable gene into a host plant, and grow the experimental baby plants that result in a petri dish four inches in diameter.

These new technologies have quietly revolutionized the growing of farm and ornamental plants. Scientists and plant breeders create disease-resistant farm crops that save millions in pesticide costs and bolster the business of growing food for the planet. They identify and then mass-produce plants that help cure cancer and other diseases. Their “clean” stock opens the way for the worldwide exchange of plants, and raises hopes that endangered species can be saved. Last but not least, they create designer plants with such pizzazz that backyard gardeners are snapping them up like Beanie Babies.

Tissue culture
, also called micro-propagation, is based on the fact that plant cells can replicate themselves.
Breeders start with a small amount of plant material—anything from a piece of root, stem, leaf, or bud to a single cell. When this is placed in a nutrient medium, it grows and proliferates, creating plantlets that are clones of the original plant. As these, too, are multiplied, up to a million new plants can be generated within one year from a tiny piece of the original plant.

Genetic engineering
can involve one of three things: 1) shooting additional genes into the nucleus of a host plant; 2) altering a plant’s genetic makeup with chemicals or radiation; or 3) fusing together the protoplasts of two different plants. Any of the three processes results in a brand-new plant. But to create a transformant may take years of painstaking work.

The popularity of these methods is growing, and more and more plants and trees are created and /or propagated in that smallest of all greenhouses, the test tube. More than 250 million plants emerge every year from seventy-five enormous micropropagation labs in the U.S. Countless genetic projects are going on around the country and the world at universities, botanic gardens, and private laboratories.

Though tissue culture is associated with
mass-production
of plants, and genetic engineering with the
creation
of plants, both can produce eye-boggling beauties. Tissue
culture produces them by accident—when occasionally the genes in a cloned plant go haywire. Genetic engineering does it on purpose, forcing the issue by adding genes to alter the plant’s DNA.

The payoffs of tissue culture and genetic engineering are many, for agriculture as well as the ornamental-plant business:

• “Clean” plants, trees, and vines, free of bacteria, fungi, and viruses. Unlike plants raised in soil, they can be shipped anywhere in the world. This has created a worldwide plant exchange not possible before tissue culture came into its own in the past quarter century.
  

• Innovative food plants, such as corn resistant to Roundup (this means fields can be sprayed for weeds with the corn unharmed); fungi-resistant soybeans; disease-free seed potatoes; fruit trees with more robust growth habits; and strawberry and raspberry plants with increased yield.
  

• The mass production of plants badly needed for medicine, such as the yew plant,
  Taxus
  . The taxol within it is used to treat breast and ovarian cancer. Thousands of large old yews were sacrificed for this until scientists found alternatives through tissue culture.
  

• Enticing ornamentals, such as a true blue rose, a bright red iris, a pumpkin-orange
  petunia, and plants with special features such as dwarf size, giant size, ruffly leaves, huge flowers, or special scents. (Remember that outrageous ruffled red coleus you bought for your window box? That was one of them.)
  

• Speed in propagating plants, which means a new variety can be put on the market in a fraction of the time it would take to raise the same plant from seed.
  

• The possibility of saving endangered plant species—including some in cultivation, such as gladioli—which deteriorate over time. This work is being done in this country and abroad. However, tissue culture is expensive, and breeders and growers do not do this unless there is an economic return.
  

The cost of a tissue-cultured plant is high, and therefore only practical when there is a large market for it. Then the price drops precipitously, as it did with the Boston fern, which is hard to propagate and would have been an expensive purchase years ago, before it became an early subject of tissue culture. (Take fern runner tips, throw them in the blender, and macerate. Place them in a Mura-shige and Skoog medium, the famous formula discovered to aid tissue culture. Wait only a short time before multiple shootlets emerge from each little piece. Mature plants are ready in a year.)

Orchids started being tissue cultured around 1950, and they were transformed from a rich man’s plant into one that can be afforded by any supermarket shopper. (Take one meristem, place it in a liquid culture, create a protocorm cluster, divide the plantlets, and grow in separate test tubes.)

As nursery growers prepare thousands of new baby plants in these sterile conditions, they find “accidents”— some happy, some not. All clones don’t resemble their parents. A
somaclonal variation
usually ends up in the trash can, but if it has distinctive beauty, it will become the next subject of tissue culture and end up as the hot new variety in next year’s garden catalogue.

The
genetic
development of a new plant can take years, and the process is not without its critics.
Pomatoes, indeed
, they sniff, viewing the potato-and-tomato-bearing plant that resulted after the fusion of the protoplasts of a tomato plant and a potato plant. They think tissue culture and genetic manipulation of plants may have detrimental effects later on.

What does the home gardener have at stake in this? Certainly the opportunity to buy many new and interesting plants, and maybe more. Some people have spent a lifetime in the garden and no longer feel like doubledigging. Tissue culture, a world of miniatures, is definitely for them. They will work with
tiny little plants, lightweight flasks, test tubes, and solutions, without stooping. The price is manageable, and so is the math, although one does have to measure those nutrient solutions, for each plant has a different “recipe” for propagation. And no need for an autoclave: A pressure cooker will suffice. Imagine the joy of raising a little forest of baby orchids in one’s own kitchen. (Gardeners who want to try tissue culture themselves should read
Plants from Test Tubes
, by Lydiane Kyte and John Kleyn; third edition, Timber Press: Portland, Oregon, 1996.)

J
ANIE, STILL WEARING HER MOUNTAIN
shorts and boots and a rugged T-shirt, was sitting forward in the overstuffed chair, one hand twirling a pigtail and the other gesturing for emphasis in case her mother didn’t get it. “Look, I’m trying to tell you, anyone could have killed him.
I
could have killed him.
Chris
could have killed him. But what I think is that either Rod Gasparra or Mark Post killed him.”

“Janie, if somebody shoved him, someone else would have seen it.”

“That’s just it. When did the rain clear in town?”

“About noon. But it was misty after that.”

“Exactly. Misty. It was as misty as that gorilla movie up there! Nobody could see anybody else very well, unless they were ten feet away. It was beautiful—swampy ravines and terrific forests—enormous hemlocks, mostly, and sycamores”—she extended her arms to either side as far as they would go—“
wider
than that, trees that must be hundreds of years old. Then we got near the summit and people began taking separate paths, and
nobody
could tell what was happening, because it was hard enough just to keep your footing on those slippery roots and rocks. Teddy Horton was right.
He
knew what we were in for—it was as if those rocks were covered with a thin sheet of ice.” The girl’s gaze moved to the window, full of the late afternoon suns rays. She might have been thinking about the homespun young man who gave them such sage advice. “I don’t think Chris respects Teddy for what he is.”

“And what’s that?”

The blue eyes narrowed. “He’s one cool dude, Ma. And smart. Even if he isn’t a pretty boy.”

Intrigued by the girl’s comment, Louise nevertheless forced herself to remain on the business at hand. “Janie, who’s investigating this accident?”

“The Canaan station of the State Police. They had lots of cops around, looking at the place.” She threw up her hands. “But what can they find? After all, a shove is a shove: It doesn’t leave any fingerprints.”

Louise stood up and smoothed her skirt. “Are you telling me you’re convinced Jeffrey Freeling was pushed off that mountain?”

“That’s what I’m telling you.” The girl, suddenly tired, collapsed back in the chair.

“Why do you think it was Rod Gasparra, or Mark Post?”

Janie leaned forward again. “Here’s the skinny: On the way up, and it was a long way up, about six miles”—she gave a long sigh—“Chris and I moved back and forth among
the people and learned all sorts of things. First, Gasparra: Just like we all thought last night when he nearly punched out Jeffrey on the veranda, the guy has a grudge. His wife told me. Said someone stole all their work on a red iris and turned it into the Sacred Blood iris. Dorothy said they came here to get ‘satisfaction.’ She’s nice enough, Ma—she’s a real trouper on the trail. But with a chip on her shoulder a mile high, just like her husband. I guess they think Jeffrey was partly responsible for stealing their—patent, or whatever you call it.”