Tech Topics - Fall 2007 - (Page 15)

LivingHistory has grown immensely over the past decades. Wild types only exist in shades of yellow, orange and pink. Today, the only colors lacking from modern hybrid daylilies are pure white and pure blue. Grovenstein still remembers his very first creation, a fire-red flower with a yellow-green center. “I named it Fire from Heaven,” he said. Since then he has created dozens and dozens. Does he have a favorite? “Well, all hybridizers will tell you your own hybrids are like your children or grandchildren. All of them are your favorites,” he said, laughing. His garden holds several hundred named varieties and looks so amazing that he and Lillian even open it to public tours. Grovenstein’s fascination with colors has been a thread throughout his career as a chemist as well. After graduating from Georgia Tech he went to get his PhD at MIT, where he began to work in the field of spectroscopy, studying how different substances interact with light of different wavelengths. He started to teach at Georgia Tech the same year he graduated from MIT and focused his research on the field of physical organic chemistry, trying to decipher, for example, how the chemical structure of a molecule relates to its color and its function. “At that time the area of physical organic chemistry had just gotten upon the scenes,” he said. He stayed at Georgia Tech for 40 years, teaching chemistry during the day and experimenting with the chemistry and biology of daylilies in the Grovenstein, now 84, taught chemistry at Georgia Tech by day and experimented with daylilies at night. He and his wife raise 5,000 seedlings a year — and they enjoy the hard work. evenings and on weekends. One of his first accomplishments in the field of hybridizing was to turn diploid daylilies — flowers containing two sets of chromosomes in each cell — into tetraploids, which house four sets of chromosomes. The additional genetic material boosts the flowers’ color intensity, tends to make the plants stronger and opens up a lot more breeding possibilities. The mechanics of hybridizing are no mystery, Grovenstein explained. He simply picks a stamen — the plant’s male sex organ — and uses it as a handle to transfer pollen directly to the pistil — the female reproductive part. “It’s very easy, anybody can do it,” he said modestly. Daylilies used to have narrow petals and throughout the years hybridizers, including Grovenstein, have worked to get wider petals and clearer colors, he explained. He also tries to create ruffled petals and has been working hard to improve double daylilies — flowers with an additional set of petals. “They are still rather rare and those that are naturally occurring are not particularly pretty,” he said. Another objective of his work is to breed daylilies that are resistant to rust, a disease that has arrived in the United States only in recent years. The hobby is hard work. The couple raise no less than 5,000 seedlings every year. “Then we have to study the plants’ habits in order to make our selection,” Grovenstein said, adding that he enjoys spending several hours working in his garden every day. He always tried to teach his students to work hard as well. “Someone told me that my students thought I was a hard teacher. I thought that was nice, because after all it doesn’t matter whether you are hybridizing daylilies or working as a chemist, unless you work hard you will not be successful.” GT TECHTOPICS | FALL 2007 15

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Tech Topics - Fall 2007

Contents Mail Call Alumni House Historic Renovation 007 Buzz Bash Dazzling Daylilies Living History Cover Story: Key to the City The Hill Tapping Technology Robotics Rivalry No Easy Ride Giving Back Balancing Act Student Life Burdell & Friends Epic Story of Heroism Yellow Jackets Very Good Team Passport to Retirement Real World

Tech Topics - Fall 2007

For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.