Christina Hardie was “wonderfully surprised” to see the reaction to a video she posted of a particularly funky flower that emerged in the community garden at Saint Albert’s Historic River Lots and Grain Elevators. “I’ve been seeing this weird stalk for a couple of weeks, but then I got close to the flower head, and it has some wild stuff going on,” said Hardie, the program and site manager for the heritage site. With a long thin stalk as wide as Hardie’s hand, twisting into a multi-faceted flower head, the blossom looks like something out of John Carpenter’s The Thing. The sunflower’s wacky appearance is thanks to fasciation, which Purdue Plant Doctor explains is caused by a disruption of cells in a plant, either as a spontaneous mutation or as a result of trauma. That disruption then causes abnormal growth wherever it’s located, resulting in odd shaped stems or distorted flowers. “We kind of got a double whammy with this sunflower. The stalk is super strange, and then this flower head is almost like a spiral,” Hardie said. Hardie posted a video of the mutant bloom on social media that racked up 18,000 views. “It was almost me just sending a video to my coworkers of like, ‘Hey, look at this strange thing I found in our garden,’” Hardie said. “But it’s really resonating with people,” she added. “The plant nerds are coming out, which I am one as well. There’s been lots of interest and I’ve been shocked.”
