Tuesday, July 25, 2017

nightshade morphology

we are, i believe, familiar with my discovery of carolina horse nettle in the community garden last season and its subsequent identification as a member of the solanum family...and we are familiar with its continued presence in the garden this year as well ( and my efforts to import it, in a controlled fashion, into my yard..an attempt which may have been given even better prospects today )..the identification came about because of the remarkable similarity of the blooms...potato blooms ( first photo ) and horse nettle blooms ( second ) have very similar ( though not exactly identical ) structures and shapes...the potatoes bear fruits ( third, fifth, and seventh photos if the weather conditions ( cool and wet ) favor it ( and my experience so far has been that the blue varieties tend to produce far more fruits than any others i have planted )...today i discovered the fruits i had hoped for on the horse nettle ( fourth, sixth, and eighth photos )...so in this as well the family similarities continue...i brought a few in ( tenth ) to put in a paper bag to see if they will ripen as potato fruits will...if they do i will render the seed, freeze some, and fall plant some in the back yard...i do see signs of possible fruits on the blue shetlands in my yard ( eleventh )...that would be an even better comparison ( the potato fruit photos here are from the 2015 season ) and i might be able to render seed side by side.

No comments:

Post a Comment