blooms around the gardens

more reproduction than you can shake a stick at around the gardens these days...and it's no coincidence that food crops are the ones whose reproductive bits are edible...it is , after all, where dna expends the most energy...like potatoes, strawberries are notoriously difficult to grow form seed...the runners all over the bed at the iuncg are a graphic display of the plants preferred method of reproduction...there are seeds in the fruit the blooms ( top photo ) produce, but how many germinate? at some point the seeds became secondary to the evolution of runners just like the tubers replacing seeds as the primary reproductive process in potatoes...the tomatoes in the second photo still rely on seeds that come in the fruit those little yellow flowers give birth to...the chinese yam vines in the pgp have turned the corner on the trellis, stalled, and begun to produce those weird little spherical blooms( third photo )...hundreds ( literally hundreds...i recovered over seven hundred last year and i am still finding rouges ) of aerial bulbs will be the result...by comparison the underground yams don't receive nearly the attention from the processes of growth the bulbs do...the gamagrass is flowering ( fourth photo ) and the plants have exploded in terminal spears and seed heads...another huge amount of plant energy expended...completely inedible for humans ( the seeds end up looking and feeling like nothing so much as little chunks of wood ) deer feast on them i am told...none has found the pgp yet...the bottom photo is of an early blue potato bloom putting the plant into direct competition wit the yema de hevos as the most intense spud bloom...red nordlands have a much plainer and less lasting bloom...haven't caught a yukon gold flowering yet...and may not...they are sneaky in their flowering...perhaps another sign of the plants' reliance on tubers for reproduction...seeds are secondary...stay tuned...the jerusalem artichokes have yet to flower.