Tuesday, spouse brought home some zinnia flowers he had cut in our community garden so I would have flowers for our table.
If you look at the top flower carefully, it is some kind of mutation or sport (sorry, I am not a botany expert). It's part red and part white with specs.
We are growing several types of zinnias. One is an all red zinnia. We also have "Candy Stick" zinnias.
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A couple of years ago I had a bicolored cosmos in my flower patch. I saved the seeds but the resulting plants the following year were all one color.
Gregor Mendel or a plant breeder I am not. Now that the flower is cut (and I wasn't there) it's too late, anyway.
I think many of us are aware that flowers and fruit (and vegetables) can pop different varieties naturally, and keen eyed farmers may take these and create something new for the market. There is, for example, the story of the Red Delicious apple.
A new bicolored zinnia would have been nice. The "AM" Zinnia?
Has an unusual flower or veggie ever happen to you?
...zinnias are a delight.
ReplyDeleteI like 5be candy stick flower
ReplyDeleteFlowers and plant life always amaze me. How everything they are can be contained in one tiny seed. And blossom into varied and beautiful life! I think I would have enjoyed plant genetics. Fascinating!
ReplyDeleteThe AM zinnia sounds perfect! I grew Yellow Brandywine tomatoes from seed in 2018, but the fruit were not Yellow Brandywine. They were beautiful red, orange, green, and yellow splotched. Tasted fine. The seed seller tried to tell me I'd let the plants cross pollinate, but it doesn't work like that. It was the previous year's plant's flowers that cross pollinated and made the mutt seeds. Corn is the only vegetable (including the "fruits" we call vegetables!) that does cross pollinate the same year, which is why you don't plant two types near each other. I also had some nasty squash that wasn't what I bought. One vine even had different sorts of fruit. Both those examples were seeds that the sellers had saved themselves.
ReplyDeleteI know someone who has a mixed daylily, she can tell which parents it has!
These flowers look like having a carnival! The colour and patterns are like fashion show.
ReplyDeleteYeah, that flower does look candy-like. This just made me think of how someone tried to cultivate a pink flower (way back in history, before genetics were understood), and they could in the second gen get the pink, but in the third were surprised that the white and red came back. I'll have to find that story someplace. I think it was in the 1800s sometime.
ReplyDelete