New here but hoping this is a good place for this. A friend handed a bit of plantain to me. He found it sticking up in the paddock and wanted to know more of how/why this might happen. Pasture is very old with only broadleaf herbicide applied once a year before cutting for hay. Paddock is also next to some research businesses so not impossible for a newer cultivar to have blown in but I expect the composition is mostly wild/old. Thoughts?
Fasciation.
Perhaps from the herbicide?
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there’s a project for this, assuming it’s narrow leaved plantain.
https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/plantago-lanceolata-abnormalities
it could also just be a chance mutation, or perhaps some kind of symptom of an infection. There are some similar things which are caused by parasitic wasps and so on, but this doesn’t appear to be one of those cases.
it would be very interesting to see if the same plant repeatedly produces fasciated flower heads, or if other plants in that field also have odd flowers.
someone else might know more?
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Maybe from the herbicides? I’ve seen dandelions with incredibly thick stems in areas that are sprayed.
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Yeah, it’s classic fasciation. It can have any number of causes, from mutation to chemical or mechanical damage to insect or virus activity: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fasciation
Plantago seems to be fairly prone to odd growth forms. My personal theory is that this is encouraged by the conditions in the sort of habitats where it is often found (lawns and disturbed green patches where it is susceptible to both trampling and environmental pollutants). Fasciation is also not uncommon on daisies (Bellis perennis) and dandelions, which share similar habitats.
Most of the time when I’ve seen this type of fasciation it seems to be a one-off. Some of the other weird P. lanceolata inflorescences (particularly the “fractal” type) often occur in clusters (multiple inflorescences on a single plant or multiple plants in close proximity).
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Thanks for linking the projects. I’ve never seen this before so find it very interesting. Unfortunately I don’t think I have much chance of finding the original plant but will be keeping an eye out for more abnormalities now
Now I now the terminology I’m off to explore the rabbithole. Really curious about why its more common in other species with similar growth habits.
The project was inspired by seeing a number of observations like this:
The choice to limit it to P. lanceolata was based on the fact that this particular malformation seems to occur almost exclusively on P. lanceolata, even though there is no obvious reason why it couldn’t also occur on related, structurally similar species.
There is at least one project for fasciation more generally: https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/fascinating-fasciation
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