A FASCIATED BRUGMANSIA

A Fasciated Brugmansia journey:

I noticed a fasciated branch on my Pink Panther and decided to see if it would flower and in a very short time it did....and what lovely flowers they were...

Here is the actual fasciated part of the branch...It was a fascinating thing to watch grow and it grew so quickly.
Only a couple of months from the time that I 
first saw it until it flowered and produced pods.



How amazing is this!!!!!!

















It was very surprising to see the flower bud emerging from all that growth...

The first flower was double the size of a normal one, it had 10 petal tips and 10 anthers instead of 5. It also 2 styles and stigmas coming from what appeared to be conjoined ovaries....





The 2nd wasn't as large, having only 8 corolla tips, 8 anthers, plus 2 of each of the styles, stigmas and the joined ovaries...
The third flower was the most interesting, it was a large flower like the first and it had 10 petal tips, but the 2 styles were fused and twisted like the fasciated branch and the stigmas looked like 2 match heads on a strip of pasta, the 2 ovaries were fused as well.

In this pic the 3 fasciated flowers are in the front, with the normal Pink Panther flowers

at the back..

I took some of the pollen and dusted other Brugmansias with it and then used Frosty Pink and Bruce's Pink to cross with the fasciated flowers....
the pollen took in all 3 flowers and promptly produced pods and even the pods were different, they were twins......

The fasciation stopped as quickly as it started and the branch returned to a normal looking branch with the fasciated part in the middle....

Unfortunately the pods on the 3rd
flower were broken off before they had a chance to develop, but the other 4 grew to maturity and produced lots of seeds that were distributed all over the world...

So far the seedlings haven't flowered, but this year should see the offspring of that amazing fasciated flower. 

Here are two of the seedlings from the twin pods..






               

          PP fasc x Riverland Frosty Pink    ................... Mango Cornet x PPfasc.
Unfortunately, for the very first time,
the plants were invaded by mites..

But there were none on the Mango Cornet x PPfasc....they really liked the PP fasc x RFP..


It's been 2 yrs since the fasciation started on that Pink Panther branch and the branch is showing it's age....the actual fasciation only lasted a few months, but the branch continued to grow in the normal manner with the fasciated part dividing into two and each of those branches producing normal flowers and pods.Here it is today, you can see the dividing point and how that has affected the separated branches...

I have pruned the whole plant very severely this autumn and some branches I have cut right back as you can see next to the fasciated branch..I didn't touch 

that part at all...It's almost as though this branch is a separate plant and I will be very sorry when it eventually fades away...the inner edges of the fasciated divide are like paper, but it's still reasonably solid...so it might go on for a while yet....my fasciated Daphne died back as soon as it's huge flower had finished...not so this one...

One of the seedlings has Y'd so we should see some flowers this year, it's a Mango Crush x PPfasc...

And here it is.....but a bit confusing as I can't be sure of the colour..

It looks very much like Pink Panther only I can see touches of both yellow and pink in different lights, but it looks white in reality..

Pink Panther turns white in winter, so maybe it will be pink, but then yellow seems to be stronger in the pics....???????

I think that I might have to wait until the warmer weather to see it's true colour, in the meantime it's a pretty little plant and the perfume is all honey, much stronger than PP.