Reversion

This afternoon I tackled sports. Now, please don’t imagine that that means my knee is miraculously fully recovered. I speak of reversion; not of myself, but of the horticultural variety. Variegated plants are generally selected from a sport, or mutation, of a pure green plant. The sport is then propagated by cuttings, grafting or division to retain its features. However, the mutations within these plants are not always stable and can be prone to reverting back to pure green shoots. Reversion is the name given when a cultivar known for a particular leaf shape, colour, or other striking characteristic returns to a different form found in the plant’s parentage. The term is often used to describe a variegated shrub or tree that produces non-variegated shoots.

Euonymus

This euonymus is a case in point. Jackie cut it right back last year, but it continues to revert. I took out the new, much stronger, green stems. This exercise left a few gaps.

It was a much hotter, equally humid, afternoon when I wandered around the garden and down to Roger’s fields and back.

Bug on snapdragon

Perhaps it was natural for a minute, black spotted, yellow bug to seek refuge on this snapdragon.

Echinacea

A verbascum towers at the eastern end of the Phantom Path;

Gladiolus etc

in the former compost bed a gladiolus tangoes with a viburnum bonarensis, beyond which

Echinaceas

lurk echinaceas.

Rose - lost label

Our lost label rose proves not to be an Aloha. We still don’t know what it is. Any ideas?

Hay bales

Roger’s hay bales were better lit.

Butterfly Small Skipper

I am not an expert on butterflies, but my research suggests that this very small one that, with its companions, flitted about the footpath hedgerow, tantalising me for some time before it settled, is a Small Skipper.

This evening we dined on rack of pork rib coated with barbecue sauce, and Jackie’s egg fried rice. I started on a fine bottle of Catena malbec 2013 given to me by Shelly and Ron for my birthday.

24 comments

  1. They say a leopard never loses its spots; perhaps it depends on how it acquired them 🙂 My grandmother reverted back to her village dialect at the end of her life and I found it hard to understand her. I find myself reverting to my Chinese side as I age. Maybe I’ll lose my English one day just as Grandma lost her Cantonese. If I live that long.

  2. There’s something so comforting about hay bales (even the modern round bales) on a field. maybe it’s the thought of contented ruminants munching in winter.

  3. We have a variegated privet in the front garden – I cut the green out but the neighbour doesn’t. Sometimes it seems like we have lost the colouration yet somehow it comes back. Interesting subjet. Great photos as usual too.

  4. When I read that you had “tackled sports”, I thought you had taken up proper American football (-:
    Plant ancestry, a spotted yellow bug, snapdragons, Roger’s hay bales and Jackie’s egg fried rice: sounds like a lovely day.

    I’m sorry I’ve missed a few of your posts and will be back soon to finish my comments ( It’s about time you got a haircut, you old hippie! (-:

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