Tissue-Culture Perennials & Grasses, Wholesale
Tissue culture is one of the things Westcan does best. We bring TC material into our Langley, BC greenhouses and grow it on into clean, uniform liners — perennials above all, plus most of our tropicals, a large share of our ornamental grasses, and a number of shrubs.
If you are sourcing tissue-culture liners in Canada or the US, this is what we do and how to order it.
Where we come in: stage 3
Commercial micropropagation runs in stages. A laboratory establishes the culture, multiplies it, and roots the plantlets in sterile conditions. What comes out the other end is delicate, tiny, and has never met real air, real light or real disease pressure.
Stage 4 is the hard part. Moving TC material out of sterile culture and into a greenhouse is where losses happen, and it takes the right environment and a grower who has done it many times before. That acclimatization work is exactly what you are buying when you order a TC liner from us — we absorb that risk so it never reaches your production schedule.
Why growers ask for tissue-culture liners
Clean starting material
TC plantlets begin life in sterile culture rather than in a field or a stock block, so you are not inheriting problems from someone else’s crop.
True to type
Every plant in a TC batch traces back to the same selected mother material, so variegation, habit and flower colour come through consistently — which matters most on the varieties customers buy by name.
Uniform, predictable batches
Even material finishes evenly. That makes your ship weeks easier to hit and your benches easier to grade, and it is the main reason large Hosta and grass programmes are grown from TC.
Varieties that are slow any other way
Some plants divide too slowly, or too unreliably, to supply at volume. Tissue culture is what makes those varieties available as a commercial liner at all.
What we grow from tissue culture
Perennials are the core of our TC work. Our Hosta programme is entirely tissue-culture — 24 varieties as 72-cell liners, clean and true-to-type stock, and that catalogue is available as a booking form.
Most of our tropicals are grown from tissue culture, a substantial part of our ornamental grass and sedge range comes in as TC, and so do a number of shrubs — Nandina among them.
Custom propagation is what we do
We deliberately do not label varieties “TC” in our published catalogue, and the reason is worth understanding: propagation method follows what the customer asks for. The same variety might go out as a tissue-culture liner for one grower and a cutting or seed-raised plug for another, depending on the volume, the timing and the finish they need. We propagate to the order, not to a fixed list.
So ask us. Send the variety — or your whole list — and we will tell you exactly how we can propagate it, what that does to the lead time, and when we can have it ready. Talk to us about your list
Ordering TC liners
Tissue-culture liners ship in the same programme as everything else we grow: 72-cell trays as standard with other cell sizes on request, a minimum of 4 trays per variety, and delivery weeks you choose when you book. You can order direct or through your broker — we work with Ball Seed, EHR, Express Seed, JVK and McHutchison.
Trays leave Langley on carts, boxed by courier, or as palletized freight, across Canada and into the United States. US-export eligibility is flagged on every variety page, and our phytosanitary checks are done in-house.