Teratology, a 4-leaf clover and an ET Little Green Man called Quella

I had Hops growing in my front garden, along a fence and up the drain pipe and one day I noticed that some of them were not the normal sort of hop at all. The ones that didn't look right were much bigger for a start and they had small leaves on stalks protruding out of the side of the main body of the hop. Some had more than one small leaf on both sides.

The South Wales Echo newspaper was running a Gardener's Questions feature and I decided to write in and ask if they knew what had gone wrong with my Hops. I got a reply, not from the paper, but from a botanical expert at the National Museum of Wales in Cardiff's Civic Centre.

Apparently The Echo had forwarded my mail on to Gwynn Ellis of the Museum's Botany Department and he thought my plants were suffering from a condition known to science as teratology. He asked if I could send or bring in some specimens and after I had done so he confirmed that this was what the problem was.

Teratology means study of the "monstrous" from the Greek word Teratos, meaning monster or marvel, and logos which means "speech" or "study of".

I was asked if it was OK with me if the specimens were included in the Museum's collection and if my address in Ely could be placed on files of where examples of teratology in plants had been found in Wales. Naturally I agreed but I asked what the causes were of these mutations.

I was given to understand that often it is not known but sometimes it can happen because of exposure to chemicals such as herbicides and pesticides. The strange thing about this was that in my street my garden would have been the one where these things were never used.

Of course, I put two and two together and realised that the abnormal clover would also have been classified as an example of teratology.

Now I had planted some Soapwort (Saponaria officinalis), which is a pretty five-petalled wild flower, and had gor mine from a large group of the plants that were growing at the side of a lane known as Birdie's Lane that leads to Fairwater. When my plants came into bloom though the flowers were all distorted and unable to open properly. Each flower had so many petals it was too big for the space within the outer sepals.

All of the flowers failed to open properly and most rotted as a mass of cramped together petals. I am familiar with double-flowered varieties of garden flowers and they can look very pretty but with the Soapwort it was anything but. "Monstrous" would have been a good way to describe the flower-heads.

Meanwhile the parent plants growing at the side of an Ely lane were all blooming normally. It seemed as if mutations were only being caused in my front and back gardens.

I took some into the Museum and, not surprisingly, it turned out that they were regarded as exhibiting teratology too.

The big question remains though: why did this happen? Did Quella the Little Green Man cause these strange plant mutations or was it me?

Copyright © 2012 Steve Andrews. All Rights Reserved.