Hybridization Quotes

“So, we are still at plus two species: Oxford ragwort and Yorkwort. And it did not stop there: Oxford ragwort’s tour of Britain has been extensive, hybridizing with common groundsel elsewhere, often spawning a plant called Senecio baxteri. Because thirty-chromosome baxteri is sterile, that doesn’t count as a new species. However, a few individual baxteri plants must, by chance, have experienced a developmental ‘error’ somewhere in North Wales, and a fertile sixty-chromosome version was born. Hence Senecio cambrensis, Welsh groundsel, arrived on the scene4–speciation in an instant. Species number three. The same thing happened in Edinburgh, but they were very like cambrensis and died out again, so perhaps we should not add the Edinburgh hybrids to the credits.”
― Chris D. Thomas, Inheritors of the Earth: How Nature Is Thriving in an Age of Extinction