Remember the good old days, when we dreamed that "Doug" was a potato? I blogged it last November, here: "We unearthed this hunk of tuber, and we thought to ourselves, ‘what is this? Was it some sort of a strange fungal growth?'"
From the new article:
Chris Claridge, a horticulturist and the chief executive of the industry group Potatoes New Zealand, which assisted in the DNA testing, described the growth as a kind of scar tissue on a wound, similar to the lumps sometimes seen on trees after a branch is removed.
“It could have had an infection, it could have had a disease, it could have just formed and grown as an accident of nature,” he said. “But it’s not even the same family as the potato.”
In the words of Doug's gardener: “How could a bloody gourd get in my garden?”
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10 comments:
You're on a roll today.
Wait...I feel like I've been here before.
How does one join Potatoes New Zealand?
These giants were meant for vegan dinosaurs.
Birds drop seeds.
I'm so confused. In ancient times, (1990ish) you just grow a new plant from what you found. A potato has eyes, or new shoots, that's how you plant the new crop. planting the eyes from last years crop.
Why didn't they just grow this thing out? First sign its not a potato is no eyes. It it has eyes, seedling growth will quickly identify the species. if no eyes, growing out a portion of what you find in a very nutrient rich medium, and wait for sprouts to appear.
all living things reproduce.
(Meade knows this already right?)
This is the perfect story for our times. The most important things going on in the world are impossible to know what is actually truly happening. For the most trivial and meaningless we get the absolute exact correct answer.
Great story if only for the name 'Doug.'
My mother in law has known me for 30+ years. Sliding inexorably into dementia, for a while last year she called me Doug instead of my correct name. As she liked me as Doug much more than she ever had using my correct identity, I didn't mind a bit.
So now the question about the abnormally large thing found in the garden: will it be renamed?
You say po-tay-to, I say gord.
Let's call the whole thing off.
That's what she said
You say Tew-may-toe,
I say Tah-mah-to,
You say Potato,
I say Non-Potato Bloody Gourd.
Lets call the whole thing off.
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