Plant mutations

Steve and Val Bradley explain how many of the varieties we regard as ‘normal’, particularly variegated plants, actually started as a mutation or sport

- Steve and Val Bradley

UNLESS you have studied horticulture or botany to any level, you may think of plants as being basically stable in form and structure. How they start is how they carry on, right? Not necessarily. Plants do change sometimes, but this can be so subtle that you hardly register it because the change takes place over a long period of time.

You are probably familiar with variegated plants, but many of these have been specially selected from a mutation (or sport) of a plant that originally had entirely green leaves or flowers of a single colour. They are chosen because the new growth is at least as desirable as the original and can be reproduced in new generations by taking cuttings.

Natural changes

Most of these changes occur naturally and are referred to by botanists as being a chimaera, the formation of a shoot or plant that has developed two or more genetically different types of cell, resulting in a change of leaf shape or colouring, changes to flower shape or colouring or a change of growth habit. This change in growth habit is frequently seen in roses, where a number of bush roses, both hybrid tea and floribunda types, have mutated to form plants of much more vigorous, upright growth.

Chimeral flowers