African Blue Basil on our windowsill. This plant is a sterile interspecific hybrid between an East African medicinal species called Camphor Basil and Dark Opal Basil, a culinary sweet basil variety bred at the University of Connecticut in the 1950s. Sweet basils, as a species, have been widely naturalized for millennia but likely originated in tropical Africa or Western Asia. According to @sfgate: “African Blue Basil was first seen in 1983 when Peter Borchard, owner of Companion Plants in Athens, Ohio, noticed it growing in the path between beds of the two presumed parents.” This plant can only be propagated by cuttings - it is infertile like many other interspecific hybrids, such as mules (donkey x horse) and male ligers (lion x tiger). I don’t totally understand the science (ok I’m being lazy) but interspecific hybrid sterility has to do with there being a mismatch of the number of chromosomes between the two parents, resulting in an “extra” chromosome in the offspring, which disrupts meiosis so that viable gametes (specifically sperm resulting from pollen and egg from ovules) will not be formed. Posting this stuff is how I learn it! I have heard that some of the reasons people like this variety is that it is perennial (but not frost tolerant, which is why it’s in my window), it makes good pesto, you don’t have to pinch back the flowers because it won’t go to seed, it has a bit more mildew resistance, it’s wildly popular with pollinators, and it is easily rooted from cuttings. Do you grow it? How do you use it? #africanbluebasil #interspecifichybrid #ocimum https://www.instagram.com/p/CHuHp94gIXo/?igshid=1mwp4ffqepq4n