needrain said:unless mitochondrial inheritance has more influence than is usually attributed to it.
In many plant species both mitochondria and chloroplasts may be inherited from the pod parent predominantly and not from the pollen parent. They each have their own genes as well as relying on many other genes on the normal chromosomes in the nucleus for proper functioning. There are typically only 50 or so genes in mitochondria and a little over 100 in chloroplasts. There are typically 25,000 pairs of genes on the chromosomes which are usually inherited equally (one of each pair) from the pod and pollen parents.
The mitochondria and chloroplast are very important to the plant. Mutations can occur anywhere. Certain pollen sterility is inherited through mutant mitochondria. Certain leaf variegation is inherited through mutations in the chloroplasts. But other pollen sterility and leaf variegation is inherited from both parents through the nuclear chromosomes.
However, there are many other factors that can affect crosses and cause the seedlings from reciprocal crosses to be different. One cannot know whether there are differential parental effects by knowing about all the possible factors that can make seedlings from reciprocal crosses different. Typically those effects do not show patterns across characteristics - they would affect or not affect each individual characteristic independently. The chloroplasts make the food the plant needs and the mitochondria enable the plant to use that food for whatever purposes it needs. Characteristics such as scape height, number of buds, rebloom or not, etc. use that food but so do characteristics such as flower size and flower colour, pigment patterns, etc. Basically, it is likely that every characteristic of a plant relies on that food, along with other material from the soil, etc. Every characteristic of a plant relies on both the chloroplast and the mitochondria. In that respect, scape height and flower size are not different. Characteristics thought of as plant habit are not different from those thought of as affecting the flower.
