I never was especially good in biology, but I am really curious about this.
This summer I have a number of marigold plants that came up via self-seedin g from last year. The original plants last summer were small 1' tall plant s with reddish-orange flowers and 2.5' tall plants with yellow flowers. I assume there was some cross-pollination to develope the seeds for this year 's plants. This year's plants are mostly 2.5' tall, and have flowers rangi ng from yellow to orange, some flowers are full of petals and others have o nly a scraggly row or two of petals.
The thing that confuses me is that this range of flowers appears on some in dividual plants while other individual plants have many flowers all similar in appearance. I would expect variations from plant to plant, but the ran ge of flower colors and petals on some of the individual plants really conf uses me.
Where is my education lacking???