What absurd thing has a plant done that you never, ever expected?

O.K. When I first started gardening I was just blown away by my carrots! I had only seen carrots in the grocery store, long straight roots. I had no idea that they could grow in weird and twisted ways. They often looked like a torso from the waist down with a big butt and twisted legs.... or doing a split.... or in the shape of a heart! I thought they were hysterical and showed them to everyone who was patient enough to humor me! I don't get so many of them any more but they are still my favorite carrots.

But this one really taught me a lesson. I had/have a handful of dying trees in the yard and I decided to try to grow some vines on them to make them look prettier. Cheaper than having them cut down. And I decided to grow a Blue Passion vine. A Maypop. It is semi-evergreen here and a fast grower. Sounded good. And they would give me passion fruit, a double bonus! And the flowers are truly weird and amazing!  One small downside. I'm told that the flowers bloom in the evening but only last until the next morning.

I can't tell you that is true or not. I've only seen 2 in the last 8 years that fell off the tree! I planted this first one next to a big, old, dying pine tree and the first vine immediately shot up 25' to the top of the tree! I have never even seen the vines growing at ground level but there are now a couple of dozen stems. And all the flowers and fruit are up at the top of the tree! All I see are the brown vines and the flowers are 25” up!  This is the first year that the foliage up at the top is getting thick enough that it is finally starting to drop down lower. Maybe I'll get to see some soon.

Lesson learned. Lots of little seedlings have been popping up nearby and I am going to dig them up and place them next to my 6' chain link fence where they can only grow so tall. Hopefully, one of these days I will get to see the flowers and try the fruit. What has surprised and amazed you?

I grew Brussels sprouts a few years in Texas. They always struggled but made small Brussels sprouts so I kept trying. One year one particular plant did not wither & die in the summer heat. It successfully overwintered. The following spring it got weird. It made a few more small sprouts along the stalk then developed one sprout on the very top. That one sprout kept growing until it reached softball sized. Thought it might flower or something but it eventually rotted. Strangest looking veggie I've ever grown. A five foot stalk with one giant Brussels sprout on top.

moving from the northern hemisphere (as a not-very-experienced gardener) to southern made everything a WTF type adventure for the first few years.... chard that lasts 3 years and gets a huge beet at the bottom.... enormous pumpkin vines with one tiny marble-sized pumpkin.... passionfruit inside a passionfruit..... maybe my favorite is when the male papaya made a fruit. I never know what's next.

(those maypops are similar to our "wild" passionfruits, they will sprint as high as possible. We usually only see the fallen fruits at the end of the season, but the pollinators love them. Here, it's carpenter bees and other larger bees that pollinate them, the same guys I see on my squash and zucchini.)

I picked up some seed potatoes in April that looked pretty spent, they were so shrivelled up and squishy that I almost thought they'd gone rotten. 50p for a kilo, and I got there literally as the staff at the garden centre were starting to pull down the display and throw out the last few potatoes. I filled a plastic tub halfway with compost and planted them, thinking I might get maybe one or two plants out of it. Not even a shoot showed up for three weeks, so I kinda assumed they were completely dead, and then I went away for a week and came back to a tub jammed full of plants almost two foot tall!

I filled the tub the rest of the way and kept watering, and now they're chest-high!

Now my only problem is figuring out when to harvest them, as I have no idea whether they're early or maincrop potatoes...

Fun topic! I love observing plants that don't follow the norm.
While walking in the woods near my home a few winters ago, I stepped over what I assumed was a medium-sized tree that had fallen down. When I stepped over the same tree in spring, I realized it hadn't fallen. It had new growth and leaves on it, and it was growing completely horizontal along the ground.

My perennial broccoli! It grew for about five years before dying. It kept making side shoots and they kept tasting good. It got so big and bushy, it fell over and uprooted itself one year. I stuck it back in the ground and tied it upright and it still kept growing. It died this spring finally. I think the late surprise snow we got might have been it's downfall.