Chimeric patterns in Juniperus chinensis 'Torulosa Variegata' (Cupressaceae) expressed during leaf and stem formation.

Juvenile leaves of the variegated Hollywood juniper, Juniperus chinensis 'Torulosa Variegata', have sectorial chimeras of variable widths and lengths. Sectors extend over several nodes often as small as 1/24 the circumference of the leaf. Other chimeras appear as light green to yellow streaks but are actually internal, dark green corpus sectors often occupying less than 1/20 of the cross sectional area of a leaf. On the basis of the sizes of these two types of sectors, there seems to be ideally about 168 founder cells comprising 63 tunica cells and 105 corpus cells; 49 of the latter are contiguous with the tunica and 66 are located deeper in the corpus. Similarly, sectoring in axillary branches of original chimeric sprays have the same types of sectoring. It is hypothesized that the outer rings of founder cells form two arcs of 12 cells around the stem apex, one for each of two leaves at a node of the decussate shoot, of a circumference of about 50 cells.