RickCorey said:I take some perverse pleasure at the way plants seem determined to undermine every naming scheme or genus-species categorization.
"Tomatoes, peanuts, corn, and strawberries seem to have little in common, with the exception that they are edible plants. Yet, they share a very unique trait, one that can be seen only with the power of a microscope—they are polyploids, meaning that they possess extra sets of chromosomes in the nuclei of their cells. Between 50 and 70 percent of the world’s flowering plants are believed to be polyploids." Read the whole fascinating article at
http://www.britannica.com/blog...
Sounds like a lot of plants already have the ability to become triploids or even hexaploids. They just have to be in the mood.
Those first naturalists didn't have electronic microscopes and had to rely on morphology.
