Well, folks, you might be tired of hearing about fasciation: but I find it quite fascinating (ha! ha! See what I did there?) and I'm always astounded when I find a new example of this harmless, but rather scary-looking, mutation.
Here's the latest one: Wisteria.
Yes, that well-known and well-loved climber, the one which drapes our houses and arches with long dangling plumes of usually purple (sometimes white) flowers in late spring... yes, it also suffers from this weird distortion.
Here's a fasciated stem which I found last week: you can see the typical longitudinal lines running up the stem.
Weird, huh?
And here's the same stem, rotated onto its side, to show you how flattened it is.
As you probably know, Wisteria stems ought to be round!
Plump and round.
Not looking as though they've been ironed.
This means we can add Wisteria to the list of plants which exhibit this curious, but harmless, spontaneous mutation: the list now includes Buddleia, in Forsythia, Summer Jasmine and Hibiscus: in Asparagus (that one surprised me!), in Roses, and even in Bindweed.
So there are plenty of articles to read, if you find this subject as interesting as I do!
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