A Matter of selection

 Which part (anatomy) or characteristic of the Brassica oleracea plants seems to exhibit the most variation (greatest number of different forms)? Which part or characteristic of the Brassica oleracea plants seems to show the greatest range of variation (biggest difference between one extreme and its opposite)? Use and include data collected from multiple measurements to support your answer.

As I was looking through the garden I found that the greatest variation where located at the stem or stock of the plant. From the pictures shown below you can see that there are stems as long as ~8 inches all the way to stems as long as a pinky finger(like 1-2 inches). Some have multiple stems and some have one it all depends on the plant that you are growing

Using the terms that follow, explain why you think there is so much variability in the domestic forms of Brassica oleracea: traits, selective breeding, artificial selection, genes, descent with modification, natural variations, mutations

Answer: Each plant has its own traits and parts. They each have selective breading to allow them to live and thrive in their environment which is also why they use artificial selection. Every plant has it own genes and uses them to their advantages. Each plant also has some traits from the plant that they came from which means descent with modification. Some plants have natural variations which mean variations that happen during cell division and some plants just have mutations.


Which part (anatomy) of the Brassica oleracea plants seems to be most consistently the same in all of the examples in our garden, regardless of how extreme the differences between other parts of the same plants may be? Why do think this is so? Again, use and include data collected from multiple measurements to support your answer.

Answer: During my investigation in the garden I found that even though the plant leaves have a wide variety in look they seem to all have similar textures. All of the plants have a smooth but not soft texture and all have thickness to them. I have a couple ideas to why it is like this but some of them are not relevant so I will tell you the best of those reasons, which is that they are all similar types of plants and they could have started from the same type of plant and they ended up in different shapes and colors because of mutations and other terms used in the last question.  

What would plant breeders have to do in order to get the body part or characteristic you described above (in your response to question #3) to become much different than it is presently?

Answer: I feel the plant breeders don't have much control over what the plants body or characteristics are unless they make a model that is not natural and not good for the environment.