Blog Post #9

          The Brassica oleracea contains many different plants with different features. The characteristic that showed the most variation was leaves. When I look around the garden, I see big leaves, small leaves, skinny leaves, and fat leaves. The characteristic that showed the most range was height. I measured a short, stalky plant as 35 cm. After that, the tallest plant I could find was almost 100 cm. Those measurements just go to show that there is a large range of height in the Brassica oleracea species.
         There is so many different traits in the domestic forms of Brassica oleracea because of all the different genes that are passed down.  Farmers can use artificial selection to make sure they get the specific plant they want. They pick two plants with the two traits that they want, and then breed those plants, also known as selective breeding. Specific mutations like broccoli are able to come from the wild Brassica oleracea plant because of descent with modification, where genes from the parent plants are passed down to the new plant. This way, the natural variations of plants can be controlled.
         The trait that seems to stay consistent is the color of the stems. Almost of the plants are green, and rarely purple. I think this occurs because all plants have chlorophyll, which makes the plants green. The average color of the plants were green. To keep this trait consistent, plant breeders need to pick the plants that have green stems, and avoid breeding plants with purple stems. If the the breeder wants a different color, he would use a purple stemmed plant to breed.