Chai\ XL LEAVES AND SHOOTS. 409 



occasionally occurs even with plants in a state of nature. "Variega- 

 tion, however, appears still more frequently in plants produced 

 from seed ; even the cotyledons or seed-leaves being thus affected. 65 

 There have been endless disputes whether variegation should be 

 considered as a disease. In a future chapter we shall see that it is 

 much influenced, both in the case of seedlings and of mature plants, 

 by the nature of the soil. Plants which have become variegated as 

 seedlings, generally transmit their character by seed to a large 

 proportion of their progeny ; and Mr. Salter has given me a list of 

 eight genera in which this occurred. 66 Sir F. Pollock has given me 

 more precise information : he sowed seed from a variegated plant 

 of Ballota nigra which was found growing wild, and thirty per 

 cent, of the seedlings were variegated; seed from these latter being 

 sown, sixty per cent, came up variegated. When branches become 

 variegated by bud-variation, and the variety is attempted to be 

 propagated by seed, the seedlings are rarely variegated : Mr. Salter 

 found this to be the case with plants belonging to eleven genera, 

 in which the greater number of the seedlings proved to be green- 

 leaved ; yet a few were slightly variegated, or were quite white, but 

 none were worth keeping. Variegated plants, whether originally 

 produced from seeds or buds, can generally be propagated by 

 budding, grafting, &c. ; but all are apt to revert by bud- variation 

 to their ordinary foliage. This tendency, however, differs much in 

 the varieties of even the same species ; for instance, the golden- 

 striped variety of Euonymus japonicus " is very liable to run back 

 to the green-leaved, while the silver-striped variety hardly ever 

 changes." 67 I have seen a variety of the holly, with its leaves 

 having a central yellow patch, which had everywhere partially 

 reverted to the ordinary foliage, so that on the same small branch 

 there were many twigs of both kinds. In the pelargonium, and in 

 some other plants, variegation is generally accompanied by some 

 degree of dwarfing, as is well exemplified in the " JJandy " pelargo- 

 nium. When such dwarf varieties sport back by buds or suckers 

 to the ordinary foliage, the dwarfed stature still remains, 68 It is 

 remarkable that plants propagated from branches which have 

 reverted from variegated to plain leaves 69 do not always (or never, 

 as one observer asserts) perfectly resemble the original plain-leaved 

 plant from which the variegated branch arose : it seems that a 

 plant, in passing by bud- variation from plain leaves to variegated, 

 and back again from variegated to plain, is generally in some degree 

 affected so as to assume a slightly different aspect. 



Bud-variation by Suckers, Tubers, and Bulbs. — All the cases 

 hitherto given of bud- variation in fruits, flowers, leaves, and shoots, 

 have been confined to buds on the stems or branches, with the 



a5 'Journal of Horticulture,' 1861, 67 ' Gard. Chron..' 1844, p. 86. 



p. 336 ; Verlot, ' Des VarieteVp. 76. 68 Ibid., 1861, p. 968. 



66 &e also Verlot, ' Des Varietes,' p. 69 Ibid., 1861, p. 433; 'Cottage 



74. Gardener,' I860, p. 2. 



