We have a mutant

[bunn]

Pumpkin Racer F1 has come up all distorted and peculiar. As it is an F1 hybrid, which I think is produced by crossing two lines that are more or less completely uniform, and is supposed to produce a very uniform vigorous F1 generation, I *think* that means that this is a genuine freak-of-nature mutant! Cool!

I am not sure if it will survive to produce pumpkins, but I'm going to see if it will.

Also, if you have no milk, using tinned coconut milk in coffee produces a strange, but not unpleasing result.

Comments

[chainmailmaiden]

This is where I realise just how little of my Biology degree I can remember :-(

I think that it is still possible to get some variation between F1 hybrids. Even though the parent plants have been bred for uniformity, there is still going to be some variation in the genetic make-up. Most of the off-spring would be very similar, but it would still be possible for some of the offspring to show variation from the norm. However I would say it would still be fair to call yours a mutant, as it's certainly not displaying the characteristics it was expected to.

Tinned coconut milk in coffee, sounds intriguing, but wouldn't it be easier to just drink it black?

[bunn.livejournal.com]

It looks a long way off the usual norm. All the leaves are sort of stuck together. But it might be something it grows out of, of course. If it continues to be very weird in shape, I shall decide it is a mutant: if it grows out of it, maybe it's just gone to one end of a spectrum of pumpkinny shapes.

I'm not sure how varied the genes of pumpkins are, but I think they are one of those odd plant families that will have it away with all sorts of different plants, so I suppose it's possible this one is a result of some sort of propagation accident.

Black coffee. Blurg.