 |
Wild Carrot, Daucus carota carota, showing three examples of the different centre flower.
High Elms Country Park, 2 August 2012. |
If you look closely at Wild Carrot flower heads, you will see a different-looking flower right in the middle. This is an odd thing. It's a little larger than the flowers around it, and although it's often more or less the same colour, often it is a deep red or a velvety black.
 |
Wild Carrot, Daucus carota carota, showing three examples of the different centre flower. Closeups.
High Elms Country Park, 2 August 2012. |
It is sometimes said that this, to an insect, looks as though another insect is already on the flower, and so makes it look safer for them to investigate - and, as a result, pollinate. But if that is so, why are so many of them almost the same white as the other flowers? And you can see a typical insect on the top photo; it doesn't look much like the flowers. It is a Common Red Soldier Beetle, aka a Hogweed Bonking Beetle, and they are everywhere just now. Its presence on many other species of flower shows that it did not need a decoy to entice it onto this one.
But, interesting, anyway.
It seems to me like one of those mutations that either do, or do not, or (as in this case) do not quite succeed to establish itself. Especially since something called carota carota seems like its being generic and basic...? I think of white cats that have one eye blue, the other green or pale yellow, of some arctic foxes that aren't QUITE all white. Do we know yet how all the random mutations work or don't? Like the equally random bred white cat with one non-albino eye your white carota looks like incomplete albinism.
ReplyDelete