Fig. 24 to 29: In the summer of 2021 I discovered the article 'Kruse, Julia (2021), Wunder der Natur (i.e. Miracles of Nature), Pollichia-Kurier 37 (1): 14', in which findings of peloric flowers of Linaria vulgaris due to a genetic defect near Weisenheim am Sand (Palatinate) are discussed.
I wanted to see such peloric flowers myself. And I found them, the last six pictures below are showing these flowers. It wasn't difficult to find either. The name of the finder was mentioned in the article, and I found her with address also in the phone book, so that I now knew on which side of the village I had to start my search. On the map I saw that a railway line passes nearby. Much more often than in untouched nature such genetic defects are occurring along railway lines where the Deutsche Bundesbahn sprays tons of weedkillers, to keep the embankments free of plants. Such agents also damage the plants near the embankment, so gene defects occur more frequently there. So I started looking along the railway line, and soon I found, in addition to many normal and particularly pale ones due to the chemicals, also two peloric flowers of the Common Toadflax, both at plants where most open flowers were normally zygomorphic. Shouldn't Julia Kruse have called her article 'Miracles of Chemistry' instead of 'Miracles of Nature' (i.e. 'Wunder der Natur') ? But such genetic defects can also occur without chemical damage of the plants, albeit very rarely.
In this special case, the genetic defect manifests through the remodeling of the normal mirror-symmetrical flower (zygomorphic, with only one plane of symmetry) into an approximately radial flower with several planes of symmetry. Several plant families have mirror-symmetrical flowers, apart from the Figwort Family, to which Toadflax belongs, e.g. also the Mint Family, the Legumes, and the Orchids. The transformation of a zygomorphic into a radially symmetrical blossom is a relapse into development history, which is also called 'atavism'. Corresponding examples of Orchid flowers can be found on this page.