I was wandering around the garden this morning when I saw this. I asked my “expert” what it was and was pointed at a page on the Kew Gardens website (kew.org) from January 2016. It turns out its an example of “terminal peloria” a well known but infrequent spontaneous genetic mutation that occurs in flowers such as foxgloves, mint and snapdragons.
The mutant flower is at the end of the flowering spike (but has bloomed before others on the spike) and apparently will stop the flower spike continuing to grow. Its inheritable (so I’ll try to keep seed from this plant to see if I can duplicate it another year) and there are photographs on the kew website where one plant has multiple spikes each topped with mutant flowers.
Go to the Kew website here or here to see more.
Late Spring
On a different topic, I mentioned my spreadsheet diary when I started up the growing at home part of this website. Its been going a number of years and the effects of the cold and damp spring this year is noticeable. I mentioned that the broadbeans didn’t seem to be as early as other years but in fact the truth is the opposite. The June 9th 2020 entry says “last broadbeans” with a small crop in the first couple of weeks of June. Other years have much longer cropping times going through from mid June to mid July. There are lots of flowers on the beans and the ones that are set are growing quite quickly. Unfortunately the ants are moving blackfly across the plants so I’m going to have to have a squashing session.