Topic: First pea flowers!

[Silverleaf]

Unity's flower colour is described by JIC as "crimson". I think of crimson as a deeper colour than this but it's still very pretty and unusual. The plant is very short like all of my experimental varieties, and I think this colour would be beautiful on a tall plant.

I do favour tall peas over short ones.

[galina]

That's quite an astonishing colour in a pea!  Do you know the gene/s involved in this one?

So many different colours - we have lost out so far with what is available to buy.  Considering purple is still a bit unusual.  Your colours are something else.  Magnificent!

[Silverleaf]

Indeed! Unity has the cr gene - cr for crimson. It certainly is unusual, and I'm absolutely going to include it in my "rainbow mix". It's too pretty not to grow!

It's one of those flowers that darkens as it gets older, so maybe it'll be even darker tomorrow!

[Jayb]

Oooh very pretty indeed. If you have any seeds available for those any time, I'd be very interested 

[Silverleaf]

Experimental pea Wraith. It's a really compact little plant with purple flowers and yellow pods. The flowers don't open fully and there's an awful lot of them for such a tiny plant. Interestingly it doesn't have any axil colour so I was half expecting white flowers. No axil pigmentation in a pea with anthocyanin means it has the d gene.


Tempest has purple pods. But this one plant has pods that are only semi-purple. It's quite attractive. I suspect it has only one of the two genes it needs for fully coloured pods.


Not in focus I'm afraid, but Scholar's almost ready to show off its colour. Should be brick or rose red, apparently, so another interesting one. Let's see what it's like tomorrow!

[Silverleaf]

Oooh very pretty indeed. If you have any seeds available for those any time, I'd be very interested 

Well I only started with a few seeds - 3 plants are growing outside and I have hopefully 4 more germinating, so with any luck I'll have a few to spare once they've grown out. Course you can have some!

[galina]

Wonder what you make of this flower?  does this have the cr gene too? 

[Silverleaf]

Hmm, I don't know, to be honest, without doing a test cross. It's lovely though!

[galina]

Hmm, I don't know, to be honest, without doing a test cross. It's lovely though!

Thank you, just an odd one appearing, which is puzzling. Is it correct to think this one contains the recessive gene b, because it is pink, but we can't be sure about cr without test crossing.  And you would test cross with a known cr plant such as Unity to get the same flower colour in the F1 generation presumably.  This would be proof of cr.  Or have I got it wrong?  By the way, is Unity the one that got slugged?

Trying to work out how much difference in pea flowers is caused by genetics and how much by environmental conditions.   I wonder how big  the differences are from site to site or year to year due to different soils and different weather conditions/ sunshine hours etc?

[Silverleaf]

There's pink and there's pink though, with several completely different genes making different pinks in different ways. Unity there doesn't have b at all, and neither does Scholar. There's a pea in my collection that is begonia pink because of a gene called beg (to grow next year).

Since I haven't seen all of these possible colours, it's hard to assess just by looking at flowers. But you're right, a cross with a known cr pea would easily find out if it has cr or not - you'd see crimson flowers in the F1 if it does.

Of course, there can be multiple genes involved making things complicated. Like the pale pink Ra has b (usually pink) combined with ar (usually violet)!

Yeah, Unity got badly slugged but it recovered well. The flower I photographed yesterday got partially eaten overnight though. :(

[Silverleaf]

JIC says that b combined with cr makes "antique rose".

[galina]

JIC says that b combined with cr makes "antique rose".

Need a colour chart that defines all these different pinks.     It's not straightforward is it?

[Silverleaf]

JIC says that b combined with cr makes "antique rose".

Need a colour chart that defines all these different pinks.     It's not straightforward is it?

Tell me about it! Lots of different genes involved...

[Silverleaf]

Speaking of different genes, here's Scholar with its own brand of pink. This one's caused by a gene called rub, and JIC describes it as "brick red or rose red". Looks more like rose to me. Also very pretty.


Unity's flowers look more crimson as they get older. I do like this one!

Now I've shown you all the flowers except one. And it's an absolute cracker!


Visionary. Wow! Such an intense purple - it's really deep and rich and gorgeous. Poor Visionary was very badly damaged by slugs and that's why it was so late flowering, but it was worth the wait. It's almost exactly my favourite colour. I know Visionary has the ar gene which usually makes bluish-violet flowers (like Haka I showed a little while ago), but something else is going on there. I don't know, but I suspect the cov gene it has may have darkened the flowers - it darkens the foliage to bluish-green, and I've suspected for a while that some of the genes that change foliage colour have a secondary effect on flower colour as well.

[Silverleaf]

Just realised looking at the last two shots, how blue Visionary's foliage is compared with the more usual green. That's the cov gene in action!

[Paulines7]

Visionary is stunning.  Is it one that you crossed yourself or did you buy it in?  If the latter, what number was it please? 

You said in an earlier post that you bought a variety of pea seeds and that they weren't named but just given numbers.  Are you able to give the name and address of the place you bought them from, please, or a link to their website?  Did you know what coloured flowers each of the numbers represented when you bought them?

[Silverleaf]

Most of my experimental peas were from the Germplasm Resources Information Network (http://www.ars-grin.gov/index.html) in the US. They distribute seeds for research purposes (but not to ordinary home gardeners) and I just had to fill in an online form telling them what the purpose of my research is and they sent me little 4/5-seed samples of the ones I was interested in. Apparently I have to share the results of my research with them too.

There's a web page for each accession giving details of its genetics (some are very lacking in detail though) and showing pictures of various parts of the plant. Here's Visionary, for example. http://www.ars-grin.gov/cgi-bin/npgs/acc/display.pl?1071611

They seem to have thousands of peas there - I originally decided what qualities I was interested in and searched for accessions with the right genes. Because so many of the types they have are experimental material rather than commercial varieties you have to know what genes to avoid in order that you don't end up with something that's sterile, or ages prematurely, or is very susceptible to diseases, or whatever. I had to give myself a crash course on pea genetics!

I have no idea what any of these peas taste like. They could be terrible for all I know, but for the work I'm doing that won't matter.

I'll see if I have some spare Visionary seeds to share when I've saved them, if you'd like a few.

[Silverleaf]

My plan, in case anyone's interested, is to create a pea mixture with as much variation in flower, pod and foliage colour as possible. Something pretty for the flower garden, but with tasty peas to eat as well!

I've now almost decided how I'll do this. As you can see, I have a lot of flower colours already from the experimental varieties, but they are all short plants and I want tall ones, and they might not taste good. So I'm crossing them with Telephone, which is very tall but only has white flowers and green pods. I intend to use a technique called recurrent backcrossing, where you keep crossing your plants back to one of the parents every generation.

Year 1 (this year): Crossing coloured peas with Telephone. I won't bother keeping the different hybrids separate from each other, as long as I definitely get some seeds from each cross.

Year 2: I'll sow all the Telephone crosses together. They'll probably mostly be standard purple-flowered and green-podded in the F1, but I'll let this generation self and the mixture should segregate out into interesting colours in the F2. I'll also continue crossing the original coloured plants to Telephone, just to make sure I have enough hybrids and all the genes I want are represented.

Year 3: I'll cross all the coloured F2s back to Telephone. I' probably won't save the selfed seeds separately, they can all mix up. I won't save from plants which don't show any colour at all, because their offspring won't be coloured either.

Year 4: I'll cross the coloured plants back to Telephone, and keep letting them self as well. Again I'll cull the non-coloured ones.

Year 5: I'll start tasting. Any plant that's coloured and doesn't taste good will be backcrossed to Telephone. Good-tasting coloured peas can self. Non-coloured peas get culled.

And basically I'll continue on like that until I end up with a stable mixture of coloured peas that taste as good as Telephone. I reckon 10 years should do it.

[Paulines7]

Gosh!  That all seems very complicated.  You must devote a lot of time to them what with planting them all and making notes.  I wish you every success and will enjoy following this thread and having a chat to you at the get-together.  I thought it might be something I could get involved in, but I think time and knowledge would put it beyond me. 

I would certainly like a few visionary seeds, please, if you have any to spare.  They are so beautiful.

[Silverleaf]

Honestly, it sounds far more complicated than it is! It's just crossing the coloured ones back to the tall tasty Telephone every year except year 2, removing the ones that are completely devoid of colour and letting everything else self-pollinate. Not much work and not much planning.

Don't let me put you off! I'm being very specific about what I want but you really don't have to do any planning and you don't even need much in the way of knowledge. I studied genetics at university so I like to work out exactly what I want to do and what results to expect because it's fun for me, but you can totally do a few crosses just to see what happens.

I'm always happy to answer questions about genetics if I can - I'm not an expert but I do know a fair bit of the theory. don't hesitate to ask me questions, even if you think they're stupid questions (the only stupid question is the one you don't ask and therefore don't learn the answer to).

I'll reserve you some Visionary seeds when they're ready. :) Remind me if I don't get back to you later in the year!