Howbout like Dervish;
who started out with three cotyledons--
and preserved the whorled phyllotaxy thru six or seven prunings???
Oh but I'm not saying it can't be cloned without losing the whorling. As a matter of fact the ones I flowered were all clones. My 2nd gen were still whorling as well. I took those clones before they alternated with a large offset though. Unfortunately I haven't had one of those tricots yet and I haven't been able to observe them in the same way. There do seem to be some differences also based on posts from that other breeder (GMT, google bruisednuts tris quads) I pointed out in that Cannapa's thread. His start out as tris and one of the things he mentioned breeding out is it reverting back to regular opposite (going from 3 to 2 leaves) which mine have never done, once mine whorl they remain tris until they start alternating.
so is there still a chance a clone reverts back to the three node growth, thanks in advance
I've had one alternating side shoot I use for a cutting which seemingly started whorling again but was very small so the nodes were very tight possibly making it just look like they were on the same level (was clone of one that hermied so is gone and haven't observed it further). The whorling (as well as the fasciating stem
which was also a clone), in my case anyway, seemingly starts around the time the plant establishes apical dominance.
As you can see it's hard to give you a definite yes/no answer, it's because the real question is, when you take a mature alternating cutting and root and veg it, does it stop having alternate phyllotaxy? Alternating and whorled phyllotaxy is mutually exclusive. If you have a clone and the new nodes are close to each other it will still have a very similar effect though. Even though it would technically no longer be whorled phyllotaxy it would still be a tri if you look at it from the top and still provides the same benefit of having better phyllotaxy (which simply means better leaf arrangement).
SPIRAL!!!--
this was already complicated enough...
:) Technically what I refer to as regular opposite is just the opposite phyllotaxy as we regularly see it, but I should say decussate phyllotaxy or opposite decussate phyllotaxy.
At the end of the transition stage, the nodes become tighter again and if you look at a bud of a regular phyllotaxy plant, you can see that the leaves are usually no longer exactly opposite to each other either. That's why I said after alternating there's no difference that I noticed.
Opposite phyllotaxy is to decussate phyllotaxy as verticilate phyllotaxy is to whorled phyllotaxy. o_O
Difference between opposite and decussate is that the 90degrees turn at every node. Difference between verticillate (multiple on same level) and whorled is that each successive whorled node is rotated X amount of degrees where X is half of the degrees between two leaves on the same level.
In practice these are not standards and some are used interchangeably, and spiral and whorled are commonly mixed up because of their names.
Click here for an old free botany book with some info on others as well.
