Sport (botany) Sport (botany) In botany, a sport or bud sport, traditionally called lusus, is a part of a plant that shows morphological differences from the rest of the plant. Sports may differ by foliage shape or color, flowers, or branch structure. Sports with desirable characteristics are often propagated vegetatively to form new cultivars that retain the characteristics of the new morphology. Such selections are often prone to "reversion", meaning that part or all of the plant reverts to its original form. An example of a bud sport is the nectarine, at least some of which developed as a bud sport from
Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences systematic and evolutionary botany, vegetation and environmental change, plant molecular physiology and development, photosynthesis, and the sustainable use of plant resources. IB-CAS comprises five research units: the National Key Laboratory of Systematic and Evolutionary Botany, the National Key Laboratory of Vegetation and Environmental Change, the CAS Key Laboratory of Molecular Physiology, the CAS Key Laboratory of Photobiology and the CAS Key Laboratory of Plant Resources. In addition, it is also home to the largest herbarium in Asia, 10 field stations, the Beijing Botanical Garden and the Hua Xi Subalpine Botanical Garden in Sichuan Province. IBCAS’s herbarium collections comprise 2.63 million