- Joined
- Jun 4, 2006
- Messages
- 2,730
An Albino sunflower seedling. It died after a few days and last one I found was two years ago so pretty rare to have a seed that isnt eaten by the birds, and sucessfully sprouts.
Yeah, got 23 fans, some people liked it LOL.lol.... you gave it its own facebook?
http://www.facebook.com/pages/I-bet...dling-can-get-over-10000-fans/102086103167950
Riveting.i recently was driving down the interstate, and saw a single sunflower plant with a pretty flower about 2-3 foot tall...
Riveting.
j/k dude.
MMMMMMM sunflower seeds.On a sidenote,are sunflowers pretty easy to grow?Always wanted to try my hand at it for the seeds.
A lethal mutation
I agree. Every year at my folks' place all sorts of sunflowers sprout up. Some around the bird feeders, others elsewhere from squirrels burying them. Folks gave up growing them for the flowers, though. Think they got to enjoy an actual flower only once or twice -- as soon as the flowers would start to open, a tree rat (squirrel) would bite the flowerhead off and run away with it. There was a somewhat comedic factor to seeing a squirrel bounding across the lawn with a flower in its mouth.dude sunflowers are super easy to grow... .
In this case, JC this isn't merely a matter of "consideration" nor is it a matter of avoiding certain light frequencies. With the exception of plants which are saprophytes (or are more accurately "myco-heterophytes") and some of the parasitic plants, it is truly a lethal mutation.Isn't it funny that what we consider a 'healthy green' in plants are actually just a evolutive reflection of the very light frequencies that these lifeforms are attempting to avoid?
Louise, I would expect that the flowers of the scion would be completely white -- without any accessorie pigments produced at all even for the petals of the sunflower. (If sunflower albinism is a simple recessive trait.) I do agree with you that it would be interesting to find out. (For those unfamiliar with grafting, the stock is (usually) the stronger/more vigorous plant that will be responsible for supporting the life of the plant being grafted onto the stock. The plant grafted onto the stock is called the "scion".)I wonder whether an engrafted albino sunflower would produce flowers with white centers...?
Or would the cells intermingle (as a surprising number of my grafts have) and produce botanical chimeras...?
And what would they look like?
Drakk, none of the seeds would be chimeras in and of themselves. Think of each seed as starting as a single ovum (egg). Just as it is in animals, each ovum is a single cell. When this egg is fertilized it develops into a seed. To simplify this somewhat, let's assume only the one "flower" is available so any pollination occurs with itself. In addition, for the sake of simplicity, assume that albinism in sunflowers is due to being homozygous for a single recessive gene.My plant newb question is.....what happens with a chimeras seeds are they just the host plants or just the cuttings or hybrid?
As many others have stated, very easy. In my neighbourhood, there are hundreds of homes that grow them in quantity, and the local community association has had 'giant sunflower' contests in past years for tallest plants and largest flowerheads....one of my neighbours produced several plants two years ago that were over 20' tall (and you can easily see tons of plants that are in the 10'-16' range around here), and I have seen many flowerheads that were easily 24"-26" across.On a sidenote,are sunflowers pretty easy to grow?