Odd Plant Behavior...Genetics anyone?

I think genetic variation with the same organism is possible. It's only phenotype expression so it's a good possibility like how a person can have one eye a different color than the other.

Genetic variation within a single plant is possible. Plants can cross pollinate with themselves, diversifying allele frequency.
If that's not the case, it can also be do your regulation in gene expression.

Could be complete in-dominance of the color allele. Sometimes when you mix two color alleles you get a third color that is nothing like the parents. Then when plants do their thing the heterozygous offspring will produce parent colors and their initial different color.

All this makes sense, but I guess my question about it is, if I've had this plant for 3 or 4 years now, why is this just now happening? Mistergreen's example makes perfect sense, but if someone is born with both eyes blue, one doesn't just turn green out of nowhere (right?). That person would have to be born with one eye green and one eye blue.

FlSHRFun said:

Genetic variation within a single plant is possible. Plants can cross pollinate with themselves, diversifying allele frequency.
If that's not the case, it can also be do your regulation in gene expression.

Click to expand...

Now if this plant was like the F3 or F4 generation of the mother plant, I could definitely see some sort of mutation or different gene expression popping up for sure. But this is just a single plant that returns each year from the roots, no reseeding, no self-pollination.

My molecular biology professor specializes in gene regulation and expression. Maybe I'll see what she has to say about this plant :icon_smil

Maybe you never noticed it? You said they looked like two white specks...

Cool thing about genetics is it's not fixed. It's affected by environmental factors and the phenotype is expressed differently sometimes.

Plants never cease to amaze me . Guess I need to do some review in genetics. Thanks guys!

Triploid plant with different supression in that meristem maybe?

That's all I've got, and I doubt it's correct.