Iconic Carlsbad Flower Fields Open For 2017 Season

Although the official first day of spring isn't until March 20, it's unofficially the start of springtime in San Diego County. The Flower Fields at Carlsbad Ranch are now open.

Mother Nature has transformed the rolling hills of North County into one of the most beautiful displays of blooming flowers for decades. The nearly 50 acres of Giant Tecolote Ranunculus flowers that make up The Flower Fields in Carlsbad are in bloom for six to eight weeks each year, bringing the famous fields back to life.

This year, The Flower Fields will be open to the public March 1 through Mother's Day on May 14.

In addition to strolling through the fields, visitors can enjoy a variety of other family-friendly activities at the site, including an open-air wagon ride through The Flower Fields on an antique tractor. The ride includes audio commentary of the history of the famous fields.

Among other activities, families can mine for gemstones, see a historic poinsettia display, watch gardening demos and navigate through a sweet pea blossoms maze. The Flower Fields, which feature a nursery and gift shop, will also host various special events weekly, including arts and crafts shows, live musical performances, Kids' Day on April 2, Easter Sunday Service on April 16 and the annual Mother's Day Celebration on May 14.

The Flower Fields have bloomed in North County for more than 85 years, when Luther Gage, an early settler, brought Ranunculus seeds to the area and planted them in his fields next to Frank Frazee's small vegetable farm in South Oceanside.

Today, this annual burst of color has become one of nature's ways of announcing the arrival of spring in Southern California. The stunning fields attract more than 160,000 visitors every season.

The beautiful flower with an ugly past

It looks simple - a pretty blue cornflower - but this plant is causing controversy in Austria. It's the chosen flower of the far-right Freedom Party, even though it was once associated with the Nazis.

Dieter Dorner takes a long sip of his Gemischtes, a mix of dark beer and lager, and smiles.

We are sitting in an inn in Untersiebenbrunn, a little town east of Vienna, where he is a councillor for the far-right Freedom Party. Over a meal of sausage, chips and locally grown white asparagus, he tells me about a planned dance.

In true Austrian fashion, it's to be a ball - the local Freedom party's first Cornflower Ball, Der Kornblumenball.

"We've never had a Freedom Party Ball in Untersiebenbrunn before," he explains. "So we said to ourselves, let's do something, let's have a ball. The band will play dance music. My favourite is the slow waltz."

The ball was arranged last September, but the timing is felicitous, because these days the Freedom Party in Untersiebenbrunn has a lot to celebrate. In the first round of voting in Austria's presidential election in April, 53% of people here voted for the Freedom Party candidate, Norbert Hofer.

Dotted through the town's leafy streets are the blue Freedom Party campaign placards and posters for the Kornblumenball, featuring a silhouette of a dancing couple in evening dress.

"Hasn't there been some controversy about the blue cornflower?" I ask. "Something to do with the Nazis?" Dieter shakes his head. "The cornflower is simply the Freedom Party flower and we like it," he says.

"To discuss what happened 80 years ago, or what didn't happen or perhaps happened doesn't bring us forward. There is certainly nothing deliberately nasty about it."

But other Austrians are not so sure.

"The cornflower is a complicated symbol," Vienna historian, Bernhard Weidinger, tells me. "It was the German Kaiser Wilhelm's favourite flower, and was used by pan-German nationalists in the 19th Century.

"Then between 1934 and 1938, when the Nazis were a banned party in Austria, it was the secret symbol they used to wear in order to recognise each other."

Nowadays, it's traditional for Austrian MPs to wear a flower in their buttonholes at the opening of parliament, he explains. The colour of the Freedom Party is blue, so they wear a cornflower.

"You are not a neo-Nazi if you wear a cornflower," he continues. "But it is fair to say that the Freedom Party cultivates a certain ambivalence when it comes to the past."

Their presidential hopeful, Norbert Hofer, continues to face sharp criticism about his occasional choice of floral decoration. In response to a question last week, he declared that he wanted nothing to do with the Nazis, and wouldn't let them take away things like the cornflower.

GM petunias could harm wildlife in Britain's gardens, warn campaigners

Genetically modified petunias which are being illegally sold in Britain could have 'unexpected' effects on gardens, and may even harm wildlife, campaigners have warned.

Defra has launched an investigation after learning that unauthorised flowering plants which are banned in the European Union are on sale in Britain.

They are working with the GM Inspectorate at the Animal & Plant Health Agency and the Horticultural Trades Association (HTA) to identify garden centres and nurseries which are selling the petunias and seeds, so that the plants can be destroyed. 

Petunias are one of the most popular bedding plants in Britain, adding a swathe of colourful flowers to borders. But orange varieties including African Sunset, Pegasus Orange Morn, Pegasus Orange, Pegasus Table Orange, Potunia Plus Papay, Go!Tunia Orange, Bonnie Orange, Sanguna Patio Salmon and Sanguna Salmon were found to be genetically modified.

It is thought they had their genes spliced with maize to increase the colour although their origin is unknown.

The campaign group GM Freeze said that genetically modified plants in the past had been shown to harm butterfly populations, as well as creating 'super-weeds.'

Liz O'Neill, Director of GM Freeze, said: "Genetic engineering can have many unexpected effects so without proper testing it is impossible to say that these flowers will not cause any harm.

"DNA is not Lego and GM controls are not an optional extra, whether you are growing food, flowers or anything else.

"They have spread across the UK market unlabelled and unnoticed. That shows a horrifying disregard for regulation which needs to be thoroughly investigated. "I would certainly suggest that avoiding orange coloured petunias. There are plenty of naturally orange flowers to fill your hanging baskets."

The  EU-wide investigation was sparked at the end of April after the Finnish food standards authority Evira discovered that cuttings and seeds imported from Germany and the Netherlands had been genetically modified.

"Petunia flowers cannot be orange by nature," said a spokesman for Evira "In the plants we found 'foreign' material: genes that do not occur naturally in the plant's DNA.

"We believe the orange color probably comes from a maize gene, a gene more often used to get a tone of orange. Evidence for GM is irrefutable."

The HTA said they now had evidence the petunias were in Britain. The African Sunset variety in particular is available from many UK suppliers.

A spokesman for the HTA said "The HTA has alerted the UK authorities to their existence in the UK supply chain for these bedding plants. 

"Every effort is now being made to trace the plants so that they can be withdrawn from sale.

"We do not yet know how widespread they are in the UK supply chain. The production of genetically modified petunias is not authorised in the EU, and any plants and seed will be destroyed.

Only one genetically modified maize variety is authorised for cultivation in the EU.

Some GM blue carnation varieties have been authorised for use as a cut flower only in the EU, but may not be cultivated in the EU countries.

Genetically modified maize, soy and rape with EU authorisation may be imported into the EU for use in feed and food.

But all genetically modified products must be labelled so that the consumer knows they are buying GM.

A spokesman for Defra said: "An investigation is ongoing. It is a team effort and we are reaching out to trade bodies to find out where these plants are.

"If we find them they will be destroyed. "It's not illegal for gardeners to own them, so if they have been planted homeowners do not have to pull them up and they will die out in the winter."

The Scientific Feat That Birthed the Blue Chrysanthemum

Blue may seem like a common color in nature. After all, our brilliant sky is blue. But it turns out, the color blue is pretty hard to come by. Not only are there no insects or animals that produce an actual blue pigment (blue creatures create the color through optical tricks) fewer than 10 percent of the world's 280,000 flowering plants have blue blossoms, reports Kristen V. Brown at Gizmodo. But that may soon change.

Researchers in Japan inserted two genes into chrysanthemums, creating the first blue blooms of the flower, which more commonly takes on the colors red, orange, yellow, purple or white. As Elizabeth Pennisi at Science reports, the creation of blue flowers involves some pretty complex plant chemistry. Pennisi writes:

To make chrysanthemums blue, researchers from the National Agriculture and Food Research Organization inserted a gene from the bluish Canterbury bell into red mums. The presence of this gene modified anthocyanin in the mums, producing purplish flowers. To achieve a truer blue, the researchers added a second gene from the butterfly pea into the mix. That did the trick, producing blue-violet mums. They report their results in the journal Science Advances.

So why make blue mums? As Brown reports, the flower market has a voracious appetite for new colors and blue versions of popular flowers could be a boon the industry. Blue in particular has been a sought-after color. Breeders have found it almost impossible to produce the hue through traditional techniques. In 1840, horticultural societies of Britain and Belgium offered a 500,000-franc reward to anyone who could breed a truly blue rose, a prize that was never claimed. In 2005, researchers finally produced a blue rose through gene editing, Brown writes, which initially sold for ten times the price of normal roses.

It's likely blue mums will be just as popular. "Chrysanthemums, roses, carnations and lilies are major floricultural plants, [but] they do not have blue flower cultivars," Naonobu Noda, lead-author of the study tells Brown. He also says similar techniques can be used to make blue versions of other flowers. "None has been able to generate blue flower cultivar by general breeding technique."

But it's not just about horticultural novelty. As Rachael Lallensack at Nature reports, learning how to produce blue could lead to new manufacturing methods for the pigments.

Don't expect blue mums in the garden department anytime soon. As Pennisi reports, before the plants can be commercialized the researchers need to produce a version that cannot reproduce and spread in the environment. Since they are considered genetically modified organisms, the blue flowers may also be banned in parts of Europe and other places with restrictions on GMOs.

Though it technically falls on the blue scale, there is some criticism that the new chrysanthemum sits on the violet or lavender end of the blue spectrum. But don't be blue about it: Noda hopes to achieve an even more azure hue, and to accomplish this there is still more to do. Scientists need a better understanding of the mechanisms that control the color of blue flowers that really makes them pop. Until then, we may need to accept a little purple with our blue.