Van Gogh sunflower mutation revealed
Those fluffy-looking sunflowers captured so poetically in Vincent van Gogh’s famous paintings are garnering attention in the world of plant genetics.
In a study published in PLOS Genetics (Public Library of Science), a team of University of Georgia scientists announce they have found the genetic mutation that’s responsible for the distinctive, “double flowers” that appear in the iconic painter’s Sunflower series.
“I’ve worked on sunflowers for the past 10 to 15 years and have thus really come to appreciate this series of paintings,” says University of Georgia professor of plant biology John Burke.
Van Gogh began painting sunflowers while living in Paris in 1887, mostly as clippings. A year later in Arles, France, he began painting the flowers in vases — a project to decorate the bedroom of his friend French Post-impressionist artist Paul Gauguin. “We have identified the gene (HACYC2C) that is responsible for mutant phenotype that van Gogh captured in several of his sunflower paintings,” he says.
Burke has identified the gene mutation responsible for van Gogh’s double headed flowers.
“There are naturally occurring mutations,” says Burke “As far as we know sometimes things go wrong. We wanted to figure out genetically — why.”
Even the official website for the van Gogh Gallery acknowledges there is something peculiar about those flowers, painted in two series — some as cut flowers and some in vases. On the subject of van Gogh’s sunflowers, the website acknowledges, “it is difficult to say how accurate van Gogh’s paintings are.” It compares those flowers painted by van Gogh to photographs of traditional looking sunflowers, pointing out differences in petal structure and colour. “This is due to the various stages that sunflowers go through, endless genetic features and natural flaws,” the site explains. “The unrealistic aspects of his paintings could be quite realistic when examined through the right variables.” Enter Burke. He’s convinced the sunflowers painted by the post-im- pressionistic artist were realistic. While the most common “garden variety” sunflowers reveal a large singular flower head surrounded by a ring of florets — the mutated
“The unrealistic aspects of his paintings could be quite realistic when examined through the right variables.” OFFICIAL WEBSITE FOR THE VAN GOGH GALLERY
“double-flowered” sunflowers appear like a large dandelion. Van Gogh’s peculiar-looking sunflowers could have been the result of crossbreeding, a wild sunflower, for example, with a “double-flowered variety.” At around the same time van Gogh was painting in the south of France, Gregor Mendel, a 19th century pioneer of genetics in plants, was tinkering with floral morphology and the resulting changes in plant architecture.
It’s part of a long-standing tradition of crop domestication — “transforming weedy plants into useful crops.”
For example the wild sunflower is recognizable by its “loose branching” with multiple flowers. This branching phenomenon also occurs in wild corn (maise), a trait that’s eliminated once domesticated.
Sunflowers are big business — appreciated for their oil, their edible seeds and their commercial use as ornamental flowers. Burke and his team wanted to get to the genetic basis of this “reasonably important economic trade.”
But van Gogh’s unusual sunflowers were most likely the result of a natural mutation, says Burke.