EVENING PRIMROSE: A UNIQUE BOTANICAL SPECIMEN

In its natural state, the evening primrose is a wild flower. But it is only in the last decade or so that agronomists have turned this wild, untamed flower into a crop.

Most crops have been in existence for centuries. Farmers have had plenty of time to learn about their cultivation. The evening primrose, however, is a brand new crop and has presented an enormous challenge to agronomists who are trying to master its cultivation in a fraction of the time devoted to other crops.

Grown from seed, the evening primrose plant produces a rosette of leaves close to the ground in the first year. The following season the plant shoots up to produce a main stem that can be 5 or 6ft tall (almost 2m) bearing the attractive yellow flowers, and then the seed pods in late summer and early autumn.

Botanists first became interested in the evening primrose plant at the beginning of the century when it was thought it was breaking the laws of inheritance discovered a few years earlier by Mendel.

In ordinary species, if two plants are cross-pollinated, the first generation of offspring is identical to one another. But in the second generation they form a mixture of two types intermediate between the two parents. In further generations new variants continue to be produced.

The evening primrose, however, does something very different. If two plants are crossed, the first generation usually turns up as a mixture of two types which don’t resemble either of the two parents or each other. In the next generation, the two groups do not split up into a mixture. Instead, the plants breed true. This is because the plants have an unusual chromosome which can repeat itself for many generations without any variation.

From a distance, a cluster of plants might look the same. But at a closer look one sees there are some subtle variations between one type and another. The size of the flowers can vary from Vain to 5in (1 to 13cm), and the pigment may differ in each plant. Although most evening primroses are yellow, some have a mauve hue, and there are many variations in colour in each part of the plant. There are huge differences in plant size, too. Some grow no higher than dandelions, while others can shoot up to more than 8ft (2.4m) high.

Some evening primrose plants need bees or moths for pollination; others are self-pollinating. The variations provide great challenges for plant breeders aiming to breed the evening primrose for its oil yield.

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EVENING PRIMROSE: A UNIQUE BOTANICAL SPECIMEN
In its natural state, the evening primrose is a wild flower. But it is only in the last decade or so that agronomists have turned this wild, untamed flower into a crop.Most crops have been in existence for centuries. Farmers have had plenty of time to learn about their cultivation. The evening primrose, however, is a brand new crop and has presented an enormous challenge to agronomists who are trying to master its cultivation in a fraction of the time devoted to other crops.Grown from seed, the evening primrose plant produces a rosette of leaves close to the ground in the first year. The following season the plant shoots up to produce a main stem that can be 5 or 6ft tall (almost 2m) bearing the attractive yellow flowers, and then the seed pods in late summer and early autumn.Botanists first became interested in the evening primrose plant at the beginning of the century when it was thought it was breaking the laws of inheritance discovered a few years earlier by Mendel.In ordinary species, if two plants are cross-pollinated, the first generation of offspring is identical to one another. But in the second generation they form a mixture of two types intermediate between the two parents. In further generations new variants continue to be produced.The evening primrose, however, does something very different. If two plants are crossed, the first generation usually turns up as a mixture of two types which don’t resemble either of the two parents or each other. In the next generation, the two groups do not split up into a mixture. Instead, the plants breed true. This is because the plants have an unusual chromosome which can repeat itself for many generations without any variation.From a distance, a cluster of plants might look the same. But at a closer look one sees there are some subtle variations between one type and another. The size of the flowers can vary from Vain to 5in (1 to 13cm), and the pigment may differ in each plant. Although most evening primroses are yellow, some have a mauve hue, and there are many variations in colour in each part of the plant. There are huge differences in plant size, too. Some grow no higher than dandelions, while others can shoot up to more than 8ft (2.4m) high.Some evening primrose plants need bees or moths for pollination; others are self-pollinating. The variations provide great challenges for plant breeders aiming to breed the evening primrose for its oil yield.
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