When and why does an oddball or quirky plant become more than just a botanical curiosity, turning into an acceptable and useable garden plant? There are several of these that might be considered mutants, aberrations or curiosities; I am being carefulwhat I call them and trying not to be too disparaging, because I know there are people who find them endearing. The curiosities that come easily to mind are the souped-up versions of a common weed, such as the rose plantain, Plantago major 'Rosularis', where the normally long rat-tail-long green spike of flowers has become drastically shortened and the individual flower bracts extended to form a squat green flower-like head (it has a long history and I have tried hard to love it, even when it does not contract mildew), or the cristate form of several cacti where the growing tip has become elongated to be more of a growing ridge where the new growth rucks itself up into a wavy line. This seems to be an established and permanent state for some cacti selections but it often happens in a more haphazard, occasional way in other plants and I have seen forsythia, delphiniums, roses and linaria where just one or two shoots have been affected. These tend to keep growing upwards like a thin flattened paintbrushwith a fringe of bristles at the top, some sparse leaves on the flattened stem rather than in the ruched style of the cactus. Insect damage, viruses, bacteria, the weather and perhaps, in the case of the garishly coloured, annual cockscomb, Celosia cristata, a generic inheritance — these are all causes of this unusual growth known as fasciation.
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