Mrihani x Opal F4

This is a plant-breeding project you can buy into rather than a finished variety. Frank Morton of Wild Garden Seed crossed 'Mrihani' with an Opal basil because Mrihani's toothy savoyed leaf reminded him of 'Ruffles', and he wanted to see whether the pair would reconstruct something along the lines of 'Purple Ruffles'. The F1 came out looking like an outsized Purple Ruffles but smelling nothing like it; by the F2 generation in 2017 the population had split into purple, green and variegated plants carrying large toothy savoyed leaves, plus the same colour range on smaller, flatter, dentate leaves. The F4 seed offered by Wild Garden Seed and Experimental Farm Network still carries all of that variation and more, released under an Open Source Seed Initiative pledge. Buying it means accepting a mixed stand and doing your own selection work.