Remember my
moodling about the little albino bean last week? Well, here's my update, sooner than I'd hoped.
It seems that albino fava beans are, as my kids say, "not a thing." Lacking chlorophyll, they can't photosynthesize the necessary energy from the sun to flourish and reproduce. So the plant that you see in the picture to the right was pretty much at its peak. Since then, all the plants around it have grown taller and thicker in the stems, but this one stopped growing, its leaves are looking burnt, and my little curiosity of a plant is not going to last much longer.
I can't recall whether the bean I planted looked different from all the other beans I pressed into the soil that day. It would be interesting to grow a whole garden box of white bean plants if their survival were possible. I wonder why albino beans grow at all if they live for such a short time, but I guess there are lots of other things and people that only live for short periods before they die, and we have to trust that the Creator who makes everything knows why. All I know is that I took some delight and interest in this one little plant as it came up, and I'm sorry to see it go.
Have you ever grown an interesting plant quite by accident? I'd love to hear about it if you feel like leaving a comment.
6 comments:
I was just passing by and had to leave a comment. I've never heard of albino beans - interesting! I don't think I've ever grown anything that interesting. But I wonder how many people miss things like that because they don't take time to observe and appreciate what's around them.
Thanks for this, Leigh. Your blogs are lovely!
You might be interested in this article. :)
https://www.earth.com/news/albino-plants-without-chlorophyll/
Thank you, Sarah. I didn't know albino plants could grow more with the right conditions. Clearly my albino bean didn't have the appropriate nutrients to keep it going.
Hi, I have one, a little ghost bean. Unfortunately as you discovered, Darwin's laws make this an unhelpful but curious adaptation.
There seemed to be a few beans among the ones I've harvested over the years that turn up as "ghost beans" -- last year I had two of them! This (2023) is my first year without any turning up. It would be interesting to learn how the mutation happens... is there some specific growing conditions that create the seed for albino beans? But I'd be amazed if anyone is researching this particular mutation since we live in a world so focused on supporting 8 million people...
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