Locals find garden oddities

Gabrielle Herbst, 6, holds an unusual onion flower found in her grandparents Marlin and Myra Herbst's garden southwest of Le Mars. Above are the potato fruits Angela Von Hagel found in her Brunsville garden. [Click to enlarge]

There's always a little mystery in gardening -- watching black earth give way to thriving vines and leafy rows of vegetables.

But some gardens have a little more of the unusual to offer.

Take Angela Von Hagel, for example.

The unusual onion flower the Herbsts found in their rural Le Mars garden involved an onion leaf encircling the flower, forming a green ring around it. [Click to enlarge]

When the Brunsville woman went out to her garden last month and checked on her potatoes, she had a surprise waiting for her.

Atop the potato plants were round, green pods, about the size of cherry tomatoes.

"I was wondering, 'What is going on?'" Von Hagel remembered. "Everybody I showed them to at first said my tomatoes had cross pollinated with the potatoes."

Trying to satisfy her curiosity, she brought in pictures of the odd fruit to the Iowa State University Extension Office in Le Mars.

There she found an answer.

"Apparently when potato plants flower, once in a while they are pollinated and form into fruits," Von Hagel said. "I don't think you're supposed to eat them."

According to information from ISU Extension, the "Yukon Gold" variety of potatoes produces more of these fruits, which are dubbed useless to the gardener.

"Potato fruit, as well as the plant itself, contain relatively large amounts of solanine," explains an ISU article written by Richard Jauron. "Solanine is a poisonous alkaloid. The small fruit should not be eaten."

And, since potatoes are grown from cutting "eyes" from other potatoes, there is no need to try to save the seed from the potato fruit, Jauron explained.

Von Hagel isn't the only one in the area finding garden oddities.

Marlin and Myra Herbst, who live in the rural Le Mars area, found a mysterious onion in their garden. One of the onions had flowered, but in an unusual way. The stalk of the flower curled around the blossoms like a snail shell, with blossoms shooting out on either side.

"I've never seen anything like it," Myra Herbst said.