Sport (botany)

Foliage of a dwarf Alberta spruce (Picea glauca var. albertiana 'Conica'), with a branch showing reversion to the normal Alberta white spruce growth habit of larger leaves and longer internodes.

In botany, a sport or bud sport, traditionally called lusus,[1] is a part of a plant (usually a woody plant, but sometimes a herb) that shows morphological differences from the rest of the plant. Sports may differ by foliage shape or color, flowers, or branch structure.

Sports with desirable characteristics are often propagated vegetatively to form new cultivars that retain the characteristics of the new morphology.[2] Such selections are often prone to "reversion", meaning that part or all of the plant reverts to its original form. An example of a bud sport is the nectarine, which developed from a bud sport from a peach. Other common fruits resulting from a sport mutation are the red Anjou pear and the white currant.

References

See also


This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Thursday, October 15, 2015. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.