Nov 17 2008
A Peacock’s Leaf
Okay, I can understand the evolutionary advantage to sporting a biologically-expensive but oh-so-impressive flamboyant tail. You impress the ladies and the ladies mate with you and you leave more genes in the ol’ gene pool.
But what, pray tell, is the advantage to having variegated leaves, as in the case of the above backyard bougainvillea? Showy blossoms . . . sure. But leaves? They are a plant’s solar panels, the vegetative equivalent of energy generators. As far as I know, less green mean less chlorophyll means less power. How could that possibly have been selected for?
Oops. I forgot. The intelligent designer of landscapes, Homo fabulous, may have been the one doing the selecting.
I just consulted the Almighty Google, the most omniscient “being” in the known universe, and this is what I learned from one site:
Variegated leaves occur rarely in nature but are extremely common among indoor and outdoor ornamentals, where they have been saved as horticultural oddities.
So variegated leaves likely have nothing to do with a plant’s natural evolutionary fitness. Do they instead tell us something about the fitness of the men or women who plant them in their yard?
I think it was Rod Stewart who sang these lines:
If you like my gardens
and you think I’m sexy
c’mon sugar let me know.
Or something like it.
