Jonquil Comparison
A month ago I blipped a jonquil that was larger and had more parts than normal. Chamaeleo suggested I study it further. Apart from size the most noticeable difference was the number of what I called petals or sepals, but which Chamaeleo said were called tepals. Today I picked this and two other flowers- one from the same stem and another from a different bulb to compare them at different levels. See extra shots for photos. The lefthand column is the large flower, the middle column is the same-stem flower, and the righthand column is from a different bulb. Both the flowers from the one bulb were a bit jaded (I hate picking flowers!), and the other was fresh and plump.
Because the camera was handheld I had difficulty keeping the images to exactly the same scale, but the cross section images of ovaries and stems were the same resolution.
Results.
The large flower had 10 tepals and 10 anthers, while the other two flowers had 6 of each.
The large flower had a broad, flat pistil, compared with thin, round pistils on the other two flowers.
The large flower had a bigger ovary than the other two, containing 6 cells of seeds, compared with the other’s 3 cells.
The stem on the large flower was thicker than those of the others, but beyond that I could not detect any more differences.
I really don’t feel qualified to hypothesise on the cause of the differences, but as they are confined to a single flower perhaps it was a mutation.
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