Saturday 19 May 2007

Pea "Golden Sweet": photo gallery


The Golden Sweet peas are so beautiful at the moment I decided they deserved their own 'photo gallery' post. There's no other way to convey the fantastic colour changes in the flowers as they mature.

These plants are being grown for a breeding project, not for eating, although I should still get a good feast from the leftovers. They came from The Real Seed Catalogue and can be found in their online catalogue. The idea is to use this variety as the basis for a new variety, introducing 'purple pod' genes into them in the hope of creating something else with a unique colour.

Of course if you're a regular reader of this blog you may remember that Golden Sweet also has gorgeous purple-speckled seeds.

Occasionally Golden Sweet produces two flowers at each node. The buds start off a pale cream colour with yellow stems.

Pink buds ensue, gradually turning more mauve ...

... like this.

And as they reach full maturity they turn blue with a purple wing petal.

This is the same flower 24 hours later ... now true blue!

And this is the golden sweet bit.

2 comments:

sugarsandsalts said...

Thanks for sharing such beautifully pictures and details on Golden sweet". I learn a lot.

Anonymous said...

I just am growing these peas. When exactly do you harvest them? I want to eat them in salads raw. Right now my peas have little peas forming in the pods. I don't want to harvest them too early if the pods are still growing? THanks. Ed from USA