The Dynasty Of The Mighty Broccoli

The plant that me and my partner have been working is a species of brassica oleracea, Romanesco Broccoli. Basically it is a  form broccoli. My plant has a green color and grows to be tall. It's stem isn't very wide making it easy to snap. It's leaves are also wide making easier to catch water.  Because of some of these observations I can tell that were they lived they probably need a lot of sun light and water. There is just one problem with my plant. It is losing.  What I mean by this is a cousin of our plant Kohlrabi is dominating our plant. Because of this it isn't getting all the resources it needs. However there is one good thing that comes out this.  The Kohlrabi's leaves protect our plant from all of the caterpillars trying to eat ours.
























Like I said before there are many varieties of brassica oleracea. The reason why there can be so many is due to the fact that some plants have a different phenotype. Phenotypes result from the different expression of  the genes of the organism. The can also be affect by environmental factors. Because of this I can guess that were my form of broccoli grew wasn't very windy or stormy because it's stem would snap. You can actually learn so much about a plants ancestors just by studying the one you're looking now. Now I already know that my plant has evolved from cauliflower and a normal broccoli. Even though my plant if generations apart from that first romanesco broccoli plant it still displays their traits. This happens because when a two parent plants make a baby plant their genes and traits are passed on.  Some times when two plants mix their genetic DNA may mix.  This usually happens in a process called meiosis. The specific stage in meiosis were this occurs in Prophase one. It's were chromosomes cross over exchanging DNA. Something that can get mixed up are color or shape. As you can see below the shapes of the cauliflower and broccoli are almost similar. The part that is edible grows in tight clumps. This is because both the cauliflower and broccoli had dominate Alleles. For example the color of a cauliflower is white while an original broccoli is dark green. W represents the cauliflower dominant allele and the D represents the broccoli's allele. This results in co-dominance were both are shared and passed down or mixed phenotype.

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Because of this mixing of DNA thats why they look the same or have the same characteristics. However they can still look different. One of the reasons why this happens is because they have to adapt to there environmental factors.  From what started of as one broccoli now has many different types of descendants with different genetic makeups. They have this because of where they live or what kind of predators they encounter. This now results in a large genetic diversity. Pretty cool huh?!