Re: [gardeners] Purple Pea Flowers.
Kay Lancaster (gardeners@globalgarden.com)
Mon, 21 Oct 2002 22:33:50 -0700 (PDT)
On Tue, 22 Oct 2002, Marc Winterburn wrote:
> We have a thriving vegie garden with a healthy pea patch but one of our pea
> plants has developed purple flowers.
Garden peas have purple or white flowers, and purple is dominant to
white, so chances are the genotype of your plant is heterozygous for
flower color (one purple allele and one white allele). If you allow
these flowers to self-pollinate, chances are that next year, about 3/4
of the plants from these seeds will have purple flowers and 1/4 will
have white flowers. 1/2 will be true-breeding (homozygous) purple and
1/4 will be heterozygous for purple flower color.
Where did the purple flower color come from? Chances are it was a
plant that was accidentally pollinated by a purple flowered cultivar,
but there is a chance also that this is a mutation.
Kay Lancaster kay@fern.com