INÉS'S MESSED-UP
ROSE-OF-CHINA
Take a look at a flower on one of Inés's
Rose-of-Chinas below.
Rose-of-Chinas aren't roses at all, but rather Hibiscuses, specifically HIBISCUS
ROSA-SINENSIS, and the species probably did originate in China. They're such gorgeous
plants that now they're grown worldwide in hot climates, and have been bred into many
horticultural forms.
In fact, the blossom in the picture is from a plant whose genes plant breeders have
tinkered with in order to get a flashier blossom than those of standard Rose- of-Chinas.
Flowers of normal Rose-of-Chinas have their male stamens mounted on a cylinder, or column,
around the female style, as shown in the top, left photo at http://www.backyardnature.net/fl_hibsc.htm.
What's happened with Inés's plant is that genetic manipulation has caused stamens on
the blossom's staminal column to form petals instead of stamens. In the picture, notice
how on the column arising in the flower's center and pointing to the right stamens are
mingled with petals, and notice that some of those petals have brownish, lumpy areas along
one of their sides. Those brownish, lumpy spots are "almost- stamens." One side
of the petal is pure petal but the other side is almost a stamen.
It turns out that, because early in the evolutionary history of flowering plants petals
arose from primitive stamens, much of the genetic information that makes a petal is the
very same information used to create a stamen. Thus plant breeders just needed to fiddle
with genes producing stamens on the normal Rose-of-China's staminal tube and, presto, a
blossom with more flower petals than normal resulted.
Plant breeders use this trick a lot, probably most successfully among the roses. At the
bottom of my page at http://www.backyardnature.net/fl_roses.htm
you can see a spectacular instance of a rose stamen with one side of its anther normal,
but the other side clearly trying to be a petal!
I don't like "double-flowered" varieties of anything. Nature spent millions
of years evolving blossoms to be the unique things they are, and now humans are
re-evolving them just for bigger, gaudier flowers. Now not only hibiscuses but also
buttercups, camellias and other completely unrelated plants produce similarly bright and
colorful, but monotonously same-looking blossoms. |