Yanick Punter

“However, recent research on the mechanisms of evolution is revealing adaptations which are not traceable to individual genes. It’s long been known that many plants – e.g. juniper and fat-hen – can exist in different forms in different habitats without there being any discernible genetic variation between the types. It now looks as if these ‘epigenetic’ effects can be produced in individual plants within a very few seasons or generations, by a process as simple as transplantation. Some of this adaptive behaviour is controlled by master gene complexes which are both very ancient and occur right across the living world. The large, aggressive, ‘weedy’ rosebay may in fact be the original form which developed in open and disturbed post-glacial conditions, and the smaller, daintier form an epigenetic adaptation to shade and woodland. The ancestral form was ‘switched on’ again when humans created facsimiles of the flower’s original home.”
― Richard Mabey, Weeds: In Defense of Nature's Most Unloved Plants by Richard Mabey