I am having a bad time searching for a term in english defining a plant that produces white flowers when that species usually produces flowers of another color. We would call that “hipocromática/o” in Spanish, but the literal translation hypochromatic or hypochromatism is not used for plants, or at least that does not appear in the first Google search. Also albino does not apply since albinism is the lack of all pigments, in plants that also includes chlorophyll.
¿You know a word for that?¿And a flower that does not lack every pigment but rather some?¿How should I tag a plant with that characteristic on iNat?
3 Likes
The term is “sport”, “bud sport”, but it is not restricted to white flowers. I only seen it in bougainvillea.
2 Likes
Albino?
For my obs - trebelo (who studies proteas) says - just lacking black (dark purple) pigment https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/177543151
Sport is the horticultural term for random natural variants.
I’ve seen this referred to as color morphs (or polymorphism for species where multiple colors are common). There are quite a few species of flowering plants that will occasionally produce white flowers instead of colored ones.
It isn’t really the same thing as albinism in animals, though in species that have darker pigments in the leaves as well as the flowers (like Lamium purpureum), the leaves may also lack this dark pigment
There’s some more extended discussion of the different causes of atypically colored flowers here: https://www.albiflora.eu/blog/?page_id=1545
3 Likes
The term you’re looking for might be “color variant” or “color morph.” While “hypochromatic” refers to reduced pigmentation, it’s not commonly used in botanical contexts for flowers. You could also use “leucistic” to describe plants that have reduced coloration, though it’s more often applied to animals.
For plants that specifically produce white flowers instead of their typical color due to some pigment variation, terms like “albinistic” (though it can be confusing) or “floriferous variant” might be useful.
If you’re looking for a specific flower that shows reduced pigmentation (not a complete lack), you might consider terms like “faded” or “washed out.” In horticulture, some cultivars may exhibit these traits and could be referred to as “light variants.”
For a more precise term in a scientific context, “varietal expression” or “morphological variant” could also be appropriate, depending on how you’re categorizing the flower.
3 Likes
This plant is albino, it lacks of all pigments, including chlorophyll: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/239001716
This plant is not albino, it has chlorophyll and probably other pigments too: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/198061869
My question is how to call and tag the second one in english.
3 Likes
Albinistic in plants have it’s own meaning, it usually is used for the lack of chlorophyll.
Color variant or color morph most times does not apply, since for example a plant can have yellow or blue flowers commonly but rarely can be white. For tagging with that distinction in mind it is not precise enough that word.
In that page they used albiflora to define it, which I think that is the term that I was looking for. So thank you! I think that is it!
Although is not perfect because sometimes is used en scientific names, and the tag gets mixed with those is good enough and is a iNat related problem.
White color morph, then?
Found the term albiflora thanks to @spiphany.
1 Like
is a species name, meaning white flowers. Not sure whether you can use that as a stand-alone word. Your meaning and intention is certainly clear.
Quick check in Google Scholar also only seems to show use as a species name. But these are then species which usually / always ? have white flowers.
PS I see it is used in the linked article - but then translated from German, since that author is Austrian ?
1 Like
Don’t we have the term forma for situations like this? I’m pretty sure I have seen the term forma alba applied to aberrantly white-flowered plants.
1 Like
In Google that seems to be horticultural use - where the white (flowers or leaves) are persistent and can be sold commercially.
1 Like
As the albiflora.eu states “Some white-flowered forms have been classified by botanists as a “var. albiflora” or “f. albiflora” – e.g. Orchis quadripunctata f. albiflora.” I think that in that case the f. or form is not necessary for the tag to label the observations on iNat, and it seems pretty official to use it.
2 Likes
Came up on another thread about colours. sedgequeen is a working botanist.
First, “albiflora” is a Latin term, used in scientific names. It’s not used in English, except sometimes in the peculiar language of horticulturalists.
Second, the “forma” is a formal scientific name. Example: Sisyrinchium campestre E.P. Bicknell f. albiflorum J.W.Moore. (“E.P. Bicknell” and “J.W. More” are the names of the people who first published those names.) This form is a white-flowered variant of a normally blue-flowered Blue-eyed Grass.
Third, there are two quite different ways color can be lost in plants. The one comparable to albinism in animals is the loss or de-activiation of a nuclear (or sometimes mitochondrial) gene involved in producing color. These flower color morphs would usually be that. The same thing happens in many plants where the leaves and stems are usually red or brown but you can find some plants (the “albinos” though we’d never call them that) that are green. Example: Cordylanthus tenuis, where the green plants are seen in one small geographic area and have been given a formal scientific name at the subspecies level, Cordylanthus tenuis subsp. viscidus.
The other way that plants can become abnormally white (where they “should” be green) is if the chloroplasts have died or mutated in some way so they don’t make chlorophyll. If this happens in meristem cells of a branch, the whole shoot, descendants of those cells, will be white, as in the first example @pdfuenteb gave above.
(Background to that last: chloroplasts are descendants of bacteria that were symbiotic in the eukaryotic cells that were the ancestors of all plants. They retain some of their own genes, though most have been lost. Mitochonodria have a similar (but separate) origin.)
3 Likes
Yes, I agree on everything but that does not answer my question.
¿How should observations of plants with uncommon colors be tagged? Especially so that the do not get merged into a bunch of other species with commonly white flowers.
I also seen the word leucistic been used, but I have been said that the term should only be used on animals.
2 Likes
I think the short answer to your original question is that we don’t have an English word that has exactly the equivalent meaning.
You might like to add the observation(s) to the Amazing Aberrants project.
2 Likes
Sorry. @Averixus is right. Add them to Amazing Aberrants.