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Related: About this forumMake Room for a New Bloom: New Flower Discovered
http://www.scientificamerican.com/gallery_directory.cfm?photo_id=D6E27118-D589-32BD-83E205FC7C1B5D74The world's newest flower is a species less than 140 years old hailing from southern Scotland, but its parents are from the Andes and North America's west coast. The yellow monkey flower, or Mimulus peregrinusLatin for "wanderer," is described in the journal Phytokeys. (Click on the image for higher resolution.)
Mario Vallejo-Marin, a plant evolutionary biologist at the University of Stirling in Scotland, discovered M. peregrinus on a stream bank. Leaf and flower characteristics indicate its ancestors are M. guttatus and M. luteus, two species of monkey flowers transported from the Americas and cultivated by Victorian gardeners in the 1800s.
M. peregrinus's genus turns up around the world but most species grow in North America and Australia. Different monkey flower species can hybridize, although their offspring carry an odd number of chromosomes, rendering them sterile. "The classic example is if you cross a horse and a donkey, you get a sterile individuala mule," Vallejo-Marin says. A rare mutation duplicated the entire genome of M. peregrinus. This polyploidic event evened out the number of chromosomes and the flower avoided a genetic dead-end.
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Make Room for a New Bloom: New Flower Discovered (Original Post)
xchrom
Jul 2012
OP
Viva_La_Revolution
(28,791 posts)1. monkeys are one of my favorite flowers
xchrom
(108,903 posts)2. aren't they gorgeous? i love them. nt
Worried senior
(1,328 posts)3. I love them too.
Had never seen one and then about 10 years ago a garden center up where we live now had them. Got a few and loved them. The garden center went out of business and I have not seen them since. I would love to have them again if I could find them.
Viva_La_Revolution
(28,791 posts)4. I found seed at Bi-Mart
so they're out there
NickB79
(19,283 posts)5. I posted this on FB to drive my creationist friend nuts
"But, but, we've never SEEN evolution occur in nature, so it must be a lie!"
MatthewStLouis
(904 posts)6. Thanks! Too cool!
Odin2005
(53,521 posts)7. I see creationist heads exploding.