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Allium Sphaerocephalon exploded
Simon McBride
Posts: 9
in Plants
Hi does anyone know whats happened to our alliums we have a large number of Allium Sphaerocephalon and about half of them have mutated as below.
Normal Below
Exploded version below:
any comments would be helpful
0
Posts
I think maybe its just the hot weather, plants are only here to proagate and if weather conditions are wrong, they will do the job quickly, they need to get from flower to seed as soon as possible, probably they need extra water in a drought season so they dont need to reproduce so quickly.
Maybe I am wrong, I am sure someone will correct me.
Parkers have an allium called HAIR that is like this. Are they new bulbs (may be mixed up) or were they normal last year , in which case it is a mutation. I have a lot os fasciation going on on various plants at the moment. I think it is due to the growing tips being damaged, maybe by aphids or the weather.
I had the 'Hair' allium and it looked just like that so fidget may be right Simon. If I remember correctly it was shorter than sphaerocephalon (which I also had).
I live in west central Scotland - not where that photo is...
I agree. Alliums can occasionally produce bulbils instead of flowers and if these bulbils sprout they'll look just like that. You can propagate new plants from bulbils, too.
thanks for all the help, they all cam in the same order last year so assumed they where all the same, we have had 6 different types this year and some of each type have all produced bulbils.
Its probably the weather then. Its trying to make bulbils to propagate itself instead of seed.
When I read this I went and looked at our A. spaeretc. and they are not even in flower yet.