In article , Steve wrote:


Rez wrote:

What was that weird and useless cross someone once did, radish and
cabbage? I vaguely recall it results in a plant that's all bolt and no
nut (grows a seed head but w/o any useful edible parts).
I didn't hear about that one. Radish and cabbage are certainly close
enough to be crossed. Radish seed pods are very edible and I have
heard they are great in stir fry recipes. Perhaps they were trying
for bigger, better seed pods but it didn't work out.

It was one of those "Because we can" crosses that biologists make. One
of my gradeschool texts (back in the 1960s) used it as sortof an
example of how NOT to produce new foodstuffs -- the result has neither
usefuls roots nor tops, it's just scruffy seedy stuff that greatly
resembles an ordinary weed.

Suppose the world worked differently than it does and you could
actually cross broccoli and lima beans. The cross wouldn't change
the appearance of either parent plant. Pollen of one would fertilize
the other and nothing would look different until the resulting seeds
were grown and the new hybrid would appear. (I just have to wonder
what that plant would look like!)

So I would expect, unless this was the result of trying to grow seeds
anyway without proper fertilization, having mistaken the neighbouring
pollen for the real thing I know plants can get strange-looking in
various states of haploid vs diploid vs ... etc. What the lima beans
grew instead of pods didn't look like any pod I've ever seen. I should
have taken pictures!!

Or maybe it just had one of those spastic years like grass has -- ever
seen that, where suddely all the lawn grass has weird hairy fluffy
seed heads instead of normal seed heads? I haven't seen that happen
since 1974. Trash bamboo does the same thing -- blooms worldwide only
once every decade or so (last seen ca. 1992).

~REZ~