More Plant Weirdness

 I think most of us remember from some earlier piece of education that things like mules and ligers which are hybrids between two SPECIES of related animals are sterile, or are not even viable. I was surprised to learn, today, that there are some examples of animal hybrids between two different genera. Fish seem to hold the lead. But they are rare.

I suspect the takeaway from this is the reminder that the categories are imposed by humans who attempt to organize the world. And to remind us all, taxonomy is an ever-shifting discipline. Especially now that DNA testing is being used to recategorize things. Previously, the groupings were done almost exclusively on morphology, that is comparing the structures of one living thing to another. For example, in plants, are the flowers or seeds of this plant basically the same as that one? But the DNA is providing lots of surprises, showing that two plants not thought to be related are sometimes very close siblings!

But plants like to be weird.

For example, most of the wonderful Sunsparkler sedums I've been raving about are a cross-GENERA hybrid. They are mostly crosses between Sedum and Orostachys-a different kind of succulent. Techincally, this "new" genus is called xSedoro. All cross-genera plant hybrid names start with an x like that.

As a reminder, here's one of my fav SunSparklers. This is 'Dream Dazzler'



Crossing genera in plants is done fairly often. These two are xGraptoveria which are crosses of the genera Echiveria and Graptopetalum. The first one is called 'Ivory.' As you can see, they are blooming, but I don't know if they produce viable seeds.

This is another xGraptoveria, although I do not know which one. I think this one is pretty cool, with the broad purple leaves.

I tried to find out how many genera crosses there are for plants. I found a list from the UK that is 94 pages of small print, and it doesn't even have several that I know of on it. As you might suspect, a LOT of them are dealing with orchids. Orchids have been tinkered with for lots of years..

Well, I slept late big time this morning. Not sure what that was about. Then I spent most of the day editing. I have two big jobs I'm working on. Wrote Chapter 31 in Vacation from DMS, which is 723 words. A little short, but it's where I want the break.

See Sunsparkler Sedums