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.
Simple Moodlings \'sim-pѳl 'mϋd-ѳl-ings\ n: 1. modest meanderings of the mind about living simply and with less ecological impact; 2. "long, inefficient, happy idling, dawdling and puttering" (Brenda Ueland) of the written kind; 3. spiritual odds and ends inspired by life, scripture, and the thoughts of others
Showing posts with label white bean plant. Show all posts
Showing posts with label white bean plant. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 19, 2018
Tuesday, June 12, 2018
One of these things is not like the others
Ever heard of an albino bean plant? Me neither. But one is growing among my regular, ordinary fava beans.
I went searching for info on the internet, and discovered that albinism happens in the plant kingdom, just as with animals and humans. It's rare, and one of the sources I found said that "albiflora" plants sometimes steal nutrients from like plants nearby because, lacking chlorophyll, they can't produce their own. Apparently, they rarely produce anything, so I shouldn't expect to harvest albino fava beans for planting next year. This one will just be interesting to watch.
Other folks on the internet who have grown albino bean plants have posted early pictures like this and haven't shared what happened to their plants in the long term, so I'll try to keep you posted on the life cycle of this one. Nature is full of surprises, wouldn't you agree?
I went searching for info on the internet, and discovered that albinism happens in the plant kingdom, just as with animals and humans. It's rare, and one of the sources I found said that "albiflora" plants sometimes steal nutrients from like plants nearby because, lacking chlorophyll, they can't produce their own. Apparently, they rarely produce anything, so I shouldn't expect to harvest albino fava beans for planting next year. This one will just be interesting to watch.
Other folks on the internet who have grown albino bean plants have posted early pictures like this and haven't shared what happened to their plants in the long term, so I'll try to keep you posted on the life cycle of this one. Nature is full of surprises, wouldn't you agree?
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