Carnations, an exotic tropical plant, can be found in a bouquet at the grocery store, especially around Valentine’s Day (hint hint fellas). There has been recent research shown that reveals the flower’s rapidly growing 300 species, many which arose in Europe. It was a surprise to biologists because when something grows at a fast pace, they usually think of exotic places. Europe seemed out of place in this nature because it’s more of a “boring” place. That was until Europe was found to have an unusually high number of carnation species, nearly one third of the world’s varieties. Two years were spent collecting DNA from Dianthus, a carnation genus. Researchers calculated that the genus is as old as 7 million years, and Europe seems to be the hot spot. It’s not sure why the carnations were suddenly booming, but might coincide with climate shift that happened two million years ago. During this, the once humid Mediterranean Basin dried out, created winters to be mild and rainy, summers to be hot and dry, and was thought that while other plant species died out, Dianthus already had some of the traits that helped it grow in that type of climate. An expert in botany explains about the study that “this is a novel finding for European flora…the painstaking task of recreating evolutionary family trees for genera with large numbers of species is well worth the effort.”
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