Keep Feeling Fasciation
July 23, 2015 7:56 AM   Subscribe

A photo of deformed daisies taken near Fukushima has recently gone viral. As serious as the Fukushima disaster is (previously), these particular deformities were probably not caused by radiation, and similar mutations have been found in a variety of plant species all over the world. The condition is known as fasciation or cristation, it has a number of potential causes, and it can look pretty cool. In some plants it's even a desired trait: the cockscomb celosia, aka "brain flower", is deliberately cultivated for its fasciated blooms.
posted by Metroid Baby (26 comments total) 29 users marked this as a favorite
 
I have a cluster of daisies in my front yard and sometimes a few will look like the daisies in the left-hand photo of the first link. Every year at least one looks like it is two flowers fused at the center. I'll have to pay more attention to it now.
posted by schnee at 8:03 AM on July 23, 2015 [1 favorite]


A+++++, would favorite post title again.
posted by yhbc at 8:10 AM on July 23, 2015 [12 favorites]


Whoa, creepy. Has Cyriak been at the flowers again?

(Great post, thanks for all the fascinating links!)
posted by a car full of lions at 8:11 AM on July 23, 2015 [1 favorite]


I found some albino bluebells this spring, no radiation was involved.
posted by peeedro at 8:11 AM on July 23, 2015


Fasciation is one of my favorite Plant Things! It is my fun fact of choice when I am covering apical meristems in my botany class.
posted by pemberkins at 8:14 AM on July 23, 2015 [1 favorite]


Out in the Sonoran Desert in the Southwest, one of the coolest examples of this kind of bizarre growth happens in the saguaro cactus.

Normal saguaros

"Crested" saguaro
posted by Old Man McKay at 8:15 AM on July 23, 2015 [2 favorites]


I remembered what this reminded me of - a goofy (and defunct) petunia genetics Flash game that showed up on MeFi a while ago.
posted by zamboni at 8:15 AM on July 23, 2015 [1 favorite]




this is giving me a weird body horror kind of creeped out feeling
posted by dismas at 8:31 AM on July 23, 2015 [6 favorites]


Great post MB. As someone who has tried to argue against some of the over alarmist views on Fukushima I was worried the daisy story might have shown up here uncritically so it was pretty cool to see you turned it into an awesome post instead.
posted by Drinky Die at 8:38 AM on July 23, 2015 [6 favorites]


Screw your "science", more coal power for everyone!
posted by 7segment at 8:51 AM on July 23, 2015 [3 favorites]


This sort of thing drives me nuts. I remember a photo gallery full of photos of 'deformed plants from near Fukushima' sometime last year, and it was mostly just stuff like lumpy heirloom tomatoes. We're so divorced from the natural world that if something doesn't look like it came from a store, it must be ~mutated!~
posted by showbiz_liz at 9:05 AM on July 23, 2015 [11 favorites]


I believe the flowers were photographed in Tochigi Prefecture, which I suppose is "near Fukushima."
posted by Nevin at 9:11 AM on July 23, 2015


Tough to prove a negative.
posted by a lungful of dragon at 9:40 AM on July 23, 2015


We're so divorced from the natural world that if something doesn't look like it came from a store, it must be ~mutated!~

I second the annoyance at this, with the added complication that I lived in Niigata in March 2011 and received emails from concerned relatives demanding that "as a young woman of child bearing age," I come home immediately. (God just typing that phrase gives me hives.) I feel such knee-jerk anger at any kind of OMGFUKUSHIMA fearmongering that I sometimes worry I go too far in the opposite direction and reject actual evidence of things to be concerned about, so it's nice to know that my instinct on this one was correct.
posted by sunset in snow country at 9:46 AM on July 23, 2015 [1 favorite]


We're so divorced from the natural world that if something doesn't look like it came from a store, it must be ~mutated!~

People have been lied to by corporations like TEPCO so often that they are quite rationally suspicious.
posted by JackFlash at 10:10 AM on July 23, 2015 [2 favorites]


With the amount of panic promoting lies about Fukushima the political anti-nuke crowd has put out over the years it's quite rational to doubt the other side of that too.
posted by Drinky Die at 10:13 AM on July 23, 2015 [3 favorites]


This also came up during the "mutant" strawberry thread, also in Japan..
posted by k5.user at 10:21 AM on July 23, 2015 [1 favorite]


If you're in Amsterdam and you need Celosia cockscomb (brain flower) desperately. This flower guy has them on a regular basis. Absolutely wonderful for Addam's Family styled diner parties.
posted by ouke at 11:40 AM on July 23, 2015


This happens to my black-eyed susans all the time.
posted by futz at 11:42 AM on July 23, 2015


If the daisy's aren't growing large enough to uproot themselves and go on to devastate a major city, I'm not going to be worried.

...so, has anyone checked the nearby iguana population?
posted by happyroach at 12:19 PM on July 23, 2015 [1 favorite]


People have been lied to by corporations like TEPCO so often that they are quite rationally suspicious.

This explains alarmist reactions, but does not excuse the lack of due diligence. Just because companies have lied doesn't mean Dr. McInternet is correct.
posted by Dark Messiah at 1:40 PM on July 23, 2015 [3 favorites]


They just need to re-name the photo "kissing daisies" and everyone will love them.
posted by stray thoughts at 1:51 PM on July 23, 2015 [3 favorites]


I saw this flower growing as a weed in Prospect Park, Brooklyn a few years ago.
posted by moonmilk at 9:04 PM on July 23, 2015


Good post.

My reading of the sources is that the mutation is "not necessarily" due to radiation, that that is "not proven," and that fasciation (the causes of which are not well understood) is pretty rare but occurs elsewhere in ways that are not associated with radiation. Also that the level of radiation at the exact site was not particularly high at the time the photo was taken.

It's enough to convince me the odds lie elsewhere.

It's no surprise though to see the nuke-happy techno-utopians rush in like nerdy Keystone Cops to make the gaping holes in their world view clear yet again by calling worry about Fukushima "alarmist."

Sure. Tell that to the 160,000 people Fukushima displaced from their homes. Go tell them face to face that your theory about this technology being safe is more real than the fact it made the communities they've lived in for generations uninhabitable.

Maybe you could bring them flowers.

Rule 1 for techno-utopians to repeat to themselves daily: In theory, theory and practice are the same thing. In practice, they're not.
posted by namasaya at 6:36 AM on July 26, 2015


Meanwhile, global warming to eventually displace millions while we burn fossil fuels instead of using a clean technology. Maybe bring them a fruit basket or something.
posted by Drinky Die at 7:04 AM on July 26, 2015 [1 favorite]


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