122 Atavism. 
acter. For if the seeds of striped individuals which have 
been artificially self-fertilized are harvested and sown, 
we usually obtain some plants with uniformly red flowers. 
The striped varieties therefore give rise to red plants 
from time to time, and in my cultures, which extend over 
about eight years, A. m. Intciim rubro-striatum has done 
so almost every year in spite of being self-fertilized. 
As the original wild form is uniformly colored (that is, 
not striped, for the color itself is composed of white, 
red and yellow) the loss of the striping may be regarded 
as a case of atavism. 
Moreover this phenomenon of atavism was exhibited 
by my cultures in two other forms (Plate I) : on the one 
hand as a bud-variation in which whole branches of a 
plant with striped flowers revert to the red type; on the 
other hand as a lateral or sectorial variation, to adopt 
HEINSIUS'S term, 1 in which one side of the spike bears 
uniform flowers, whilst the other bears striped ones. 
Let us examine these two cases more closely. 
In the case of bud-variation a striped plant bears a 
branch all of whose flowers are red, without striping. 
If, as is usually the case, the plant flowers on 6-8 or 
more lateral branches the abnormality is very striking. 
A single plant very seldom bears two branches with red 
flowers, and it scarcely ever happens, if indeed it ever 
does, that the terminal portion of the main stem has red, 
and the branches striped flowers. As a rule it is one of 
the lower stronger branches which is atavistic and seldom 
one of the higher weaker ones. I occasionally found a 
tertiary branch with red flowers, i. e., a lateral twig of 
a striped branch. As might be expected, the coarsely 
1 H, W. HEINSIUS, Over bonte bladercn, Genootschap v. Natmir-, 
Genees- en Heelkunde, Biologische Sectie, May, 7, 1898, p. 2. 
