Forum home Plants
This Forum will close on Wednesday 27 March, 2024. Please refer to the announcement on the Discussions page for further detail.

Fascinated by Fasciation

18911131422

Posts

  • micearguersmicearguers Posts: 646
    First time I've seen this in my garden. Looks like fasciation to me, in an oriental poppy.
  • DovefromaboveDovefromabove Posts: 88,129
    I think that’s just how those poppies are ... they just look like some sort of insane dress with layers and layers of frilly petticoats ... there were lots here when we moved in but they don’t appear any more. 

    Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.





  • fidgetbonesfidgetbones Posts: 17,615
    edited June 2019
    I think that is poppy pink chiffon, a double form of the annual opium poppy.
    Oriental poppies have hairy flower buds.
  • micearguersmicearguers Posts: 646
    Aha, I did wonder a little bit about that possibility. A poppy close to it looks much less frilly, that's why I thought it might be fasciation. Thanks!
  • fidgetbonesfidgetbones Posts: 17,615
    The seed can often lie dormant in the soil for a long time until it is disturbed and then germinates. I have had a few random ones pop up this year. I will probably save the seeds and scatter them about when I  pull out the summer bedding.
  • micearguersmicearguers Posts: 646
    On second thought, some forms of fasciation can be a genetic change that is carried along the generations. Could this have originated as a form of fasciation?
  • fidgetbonesfidgetbones Posts: 17,615
    I think it is commonly termed a sport, a genetic mutation, from the original opium poppy which is single.
  • micearguersmicearguers Posts: 646
    @fidgetbones I've looked it up and get Sports may differ by foliage shape or color, flowers, fruit, or branch structure. The cause is generally thought to be a chance genetic mutation. Sports with desirable characteristics are often propagated vegetatively to form new cultivars that retain the characteristics of the new morphology.
    So sports in this sense do not produce similar offspring.

    The flower does not really look like a double to me although indeed it is described as such (https://www.plant-world-seeds.com/store/view_seed_item/1447). Double flowers are nearly always sterile as the staments are converted to petals, although exception exist apparently. I wonder if this poppy is really a double or does actually fall under fasciation - or a mixture of the two.
  • LynLyn Posts: 23,190
    @1634 Racine isn’t that what the Buddlea is supposed to look like? 
    Gardening on the wild, windy west side of Dartmoor. 

  • josusa47josusa47 Posts: 3,530
    micearguers said:   

    Double flowers are nearly always sterile as the staments are converted to petals, although exception exist apparently. 

    I have one of the exceptions: double poppies whose flowers are as dense as cabbages, and they are prolific self-seeders.
Sign In or Register to comment.