A Pinwheel By Any Other Name

Nancy Robitaille

Fenna - photo by Hiroko Endo

African violet hobbyists are nuts! I have no qualms about making that statement since I’m one myself.  We fall head-over-heels in love with a common everyday plant grown by the hundreds in cool, damp basements by the light of glaring fluorescent tubes.  We always want the latest and greatest from among the hundreds of new releases of hybrid African violets produced each year and are willing to play through the nose for them.  If you don’t believe me, check out the prices of some of the plants on Ebay!

It seems now that a plant that dates back only a few years, even if it performs beautifully, is  passé.   Only new plants and novelties catch our eye.  Today there are plenty of “different” violets: the yellow-blooming plants, the spotted and streaked and of course the chimera.

 What’s In A Name?

Originally the term “chimera” was reserved for a strange beast found in Greek mythology that sported the head of a lion, the body of a goat, and tail of a dragon.  Such a creature definitely had distinct types of genetic tissue of the same animal, just like a pinwheel violet, so was probably a true chimera.  Even the ancients had serious doubts about whether such a creature ever existed, so the word “chimera” came to mean “an absurb creation of the imagination.”  Given the characteristics of the pinwheel flower, extending the word chimera to African violets therefore was only logical.

It hasn’t been that long since the word “chimera” was introduced to African growers, via magazines and other written publications.  Most people saw the word without having ever heard it spoken, so it is not surprising that mispronounciations abound.

According to the dictionary “Chimera” is pronounced  “Ki-me-ra” or “Ka-mir-a” with  a hard C, not “She-mer-a” or  “Che-mer-a.”

Candy Cane Flowers

Why all the interest in chimeras?  To those of us who are not hybridizers, the chimera is just another pretty flower with a stripe down each lobe.  Many growers simply use the terms “pinwheel” or “striped” flower.

 To hybridizers and botanists, a chimera is a very special plant made up of two entirely different plants in one.  The biological definition of a chimera is “a mixture of tissues of different genetic constitution in the same part of an organism.”  In other words, the basic flower color stems from one type of tissue, the central stripe from another.  Think of a chimera plant as being a candy cane.  The chimera flower is two totally different plants twisted and melted together to make one, yet each retains its distinctive color.

A cross section of a chimera leaf or stem would show it is made up of two different genetic cells; one for the main color of the bloom, the other for the color of the stripe of each bloom.  As the flower lobe develops, most of it grows from a certain tissue layer, while the second color grows from a different layer.  This produces a striped or pinwheel effect.

How Did Chimeras Come About?

Perhaps someday it will be possible to take a cell from a pink African violet, merge it with the cell of a blue flowered plant and get the two to grow as one plant, producing a chimera.  At the present time it is not possible to create new chimeras in the laboratory.  The first chimeras resulted from partial mutations.  Some of the cells remained true to the mother plant, while other cells within the same stem became quite different.  In true or periclinal chimeras, the mutated cells are on the outer side of the leaf tissue, while the inner core is exactly like the mother plant.  The result of such partial mutations is a chimera.

Chimeras actually occur quite frequently in African violets and in many other plants.  When part of a plant suddenly begins to produce variegated leaves or different colored flowers, a chimera may be involved, especially when this section continues to grow in the same way over time, sometimes spreading slightly to adjacent parts of the plant, sometimes losing ground.  Unfortunately, in most cases, these chimeral tissues lie adjacent to the normal ones, not surrounding them, and it is unlikely that a stable, reproducible pattern will be produced from them.

Pinwheel violets, with two colors or shades distinctly marked on the same flower, have been know almost since the first African violet was grown in culture, one hundred years ago.  They emerged as occasional mutations and were rarely given a second thought, since no one knew how to propagate them.  For many years the African Violet Society of America would not allow chimera violets to be registered, maintaining that if they could not be reproduced true from leaf cuttings, they were not stable enough to be considered viable cultivars.  Today it is now recognized that “reproducing true” can also be accomplished by means other than leaf cuttings, and chimera violets have risen to the pinnacle of popularity in the African violet world.  The extra care needed in producing chimeras as opposed to regular  violets  results in a higher price tag.  Even the least expensive baby plants in first bloom can cost $5 or more and new releases range in the $20-plus bracket.