If geneticist had their gild, this flower would be ideal for its coat-of-arm.
For a long enough time, I had a suspicion that autumn crocuses don’t have any relation with real crocuses, except for flower appearance. However, I have never been enthusiastic enough to find the truth.
A day ago, we met some of these flowers (they are European but often use in American garden for fall bloom), and I finally decided to to find the answer.
Colchicum autumnale aka Autumn Crocus aka Meadow saffron aka Naked boys (or Naked ladies, depends on gender of the viewer).
The separate family of Colchicaceae. Real crocuses belong to the family of Iridaseae. Well, they even belong to different orders.
Now about genetics and coat-of-arm. The family of Colchicacea, and Colchicum autumnale in the first place, is the main source of cochicine. The Latin name of the flower just directly says about it.
For people who are far from genetic modification of organisms: colchicine is an alcaloid that loch cell division at methaphase. As a result – it is a strong mutagen. In the early days of genetics, when it started experimental work on the cell level, colchicine was very popular. I believe, that at least half of mutagenic experiments were done with colchicine.
Even now, it is actively used in plant breeding for inducing polyploidy.
For one moment I was not sure what was more appropriate for guild coat-of-arm – autumn crocus or pea (Hello, Mendel). However, the pea is an object of experiment, but the autumn crocus -is an instrument, like a square and compasses for Masonry, so I decided on behalf of the autumn crocus.
