Genes on the Run

There were some fabulous patches of primroses in flower along the Northumbrian coast near Howick last weekend and amongst them were a few plants like the one below, with pink petals.

Plants like this are almost certainly the product of crosses between our native primroses and exotic cultivated species ..... perhaps between plants growing in the gardens at Howick Hall and their wild cousins on the grassy bank just above the strand line at Howick Haven, cross pollinated by a bee. Some people get very steamed-up about potential threats to our wild flora posed by occasional crosses with GM crops (not that we grow any of these in Britain yet) but there's no doubt that some cultivated, exotic plant species in gardens have been exchanging genes with some of  closely-related native wild flowers for a long time. The garden polyanthus is the product of hybridisation between primroses, cowslips and an unknown continental Primula species that contributed blue and red pigments to the mix, and when polyanthus is grown in the proximity of primroses and cowslips it exchanges genes with them. Exotic columbine (Aquilegia) species have a propensity to hybridise with our native wild columbines - now rare - so any Aquilegia vulgaris growing within bee-flight distance of a garden with cultivated Aquilegia species is potentially at risk of 'contamination'. Does it matter? I think not. I've been admiring the primroses between Cullernose point and Howick for thirty years now and there are no more pink-flowered primroses there now than when I first walked that path. They just add to the interest of this glorious coastal footpath.