I'll point out that sunflowers have been commercially hybridized for decades before these experiments. The experiment was designed to to create not an atmosphere of natural selection that would create a new, mutated species, but to recreate an existing species from hybridized variants.
The experiment shows that recrossing these hybridized variants results in a "new species" which "is virtually identical to H. anomalus" - I suspect that this new species virtually identical to H. anomalus can actually be cross-bred with H. anomalus and is not therefore a truly unique species.
This experiment tends to show the remarkable phenotypic stability of the sunflower, and does not demonstrate a naturally occurring mutation radical enough to even achieve the level of alteration typical of horticultural hybridization.
"The Helianthus experiments were designed to repeat what happened naturally
I'll point out that sunflowers have been commercially hybridized for decades before these experiments. The experiment was designed to to create not an atmosphere of natural selection that would create a new, mutated species, but to recreate an existing species from hybridized variants.
The experiment shows that recrossing these hybridized variants results in a "new species" which "is virtually identical to H. anomalus" - I suspect that this new species virtually identical to H. anomalus can actually be cross-bred with H. anomalus and is not therefore a truly unique species.
This experiment tends to show the remarkable phenotypic stability of the sunflower, and does not demonstrate a naturally occurring mutation radical enough to even achieve the level of alteration typical of horticultural hybridization."
Now we are getting somewhere.
1. If you read more carefully, you will see that the laboratory derived H. anomalus does indeed cross with and is fully fertile with wild H. anomalus.
2. The parental species are wild, natural Helianthus species. H. anomalus is a wild, natural species of Helianthus.
3. Genetic analyses of the putative parents and H. anomalus indicated that the 'parents" were evolutionary precursors to H. anomalus. The laboratory experiments fully support that hypothesis.
4. I know you'd like to think this is "just horticulture" and "hybridization", but these experiments clearly show a mechanism for the evolution of wild, natural H. anomalus from other wild, natural Helianthus spp. It has nothing to do with horticulture and everything to do with evolution.
5. Experts in the field of plant evolution state that about 40% of today's plant species have arisen from a hybridization mechanism. It is quite common. That hybridization is the mechanism for the formation of H. anomalus does in no way denigrate H. anomalus as a natural species.
6. If you do not think that H. anomalus arose by the mechanism described in these experiments, then show where the experiments are faulty and offer a better explanation for the origin of H. anomalus.
All though you either didn't read all the thread or understand it completly, that you for at least making the effort.