Rubus Breeding - weird phenotype - do you know what this is?

General Fruit Growing
#1

In order to prepare for some crosses with raspberries I just sowed a batch of seeds from raspberries that I bought in the supermarket. It was just to test my whole procedure of getting the seeds, drying, stratifying and then germinating them. The next year I found that my procedure worked and was ready to throw the seedlings away, but I found one plant in my pot of around 50 seedlings that was thornless. So I thought I would keep it and grow it out.

This year it started flowering, but the flowers look really very strange. There is obviously something wrong with the flower formation and I wondered if that is a common mutation or a common thing to see in rubus breeding. Do any of you who have more knowledge and experience any idea of what is going on here?

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And here is a picture of it compared to normal raspberries:

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I would appreciate any feedback to help me find out what is going on here. Thank you in advance!

2 Likes
#2

My guess is fungal, not phenotype.

#3

Looks like Rubus deformicus.

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#4

It will be very interesting to see how the fruit develops.

#5

They almost look like clusters, like

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#6

It seems rubus niveus or rubus leucodermis…

#7

Is that Mysore raspberry? Those are beautiful. They look like little cherimoyas.

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#8

That’s what i said, rubus niveus… i have it and it looks like it.

#9

Yep, not mine just a grab from the interwebs to best convey what I meant by “cluster.”

#10

Thank you for all the replies!

I think it is definitely genetic and not fungal, all the flowers on this plant display the same deformation in the same way.
It seems like some part of the flower morphology has multiplied, I can’t really see if it is the stamens or the stigma’s, but there is an abnormally large number of them on each flower compared to the normal flowers.
It looks like some part of the flower has doubled and it is now trying to grow five or six complete flowers out of one flower head, if that makes sense…

Since I read about different polish levels in raspberries and blackberries I was wondering wether this was a common deformation that has to do with mismatched polish levels and infertility.

But even though the flowered are deformed, it looks like some small compartments of the berries have been pollinated and some individual drupes set fruit…

I will later follow up with pictures of what the berries look like…

#11

The closest thing I can think of is “hose in hose” where a flower forms inside another flower. This is different than “double” wherein a flower produces extra petals.

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#12

I think you are right, it is some kind of doubled structure.

The berries don’t form into a regular shape and don’t seem to have the place for each drupe to grow.
It still looks like some of the individual drupes did get pollinated and are setting, so while the berry is a mess, it may give me some seeds to grow out for next year. We’ll see what appears in that generation…

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