£12 BUD- VARIATION Chap. XI. 



" years or more, and sometimes this change never takes place." 82 

 The broken or variegated colours which give value to all tulips are 

 due to bud-variation ; for although the Bybloemens and some other 

 kinds have been raised from several distinct breeders, yet all the 

 Baguets are said to have come from a single breeder or seedling. 

 This bud- variation, in accordance with the views of MM. Vilmorin 

 and Verlot, 83 is probably an attempt to revert to that uniform 

 colour which is natural to the species. A tulip, however, which has 

 already become broken, when treated with too strong manure, is 

 liable to flush or lose by a second act of reversion its variegated 

 colours. Some kinds, as Imperatrix Florum, are much more liable 

 than others to flushing ; and Mr. Dickson maintains 84 that this can 

 no more be accounted for than the variation of any other plant. 

 He believes that English growers, from care in choosing seed 

 from broken flowers instead of from plain flowers, have to a 

 certain extent diminished the tendency in flowers already broken 

 to flushing or secondary reversion. Jris xiphium, according to 

 M. Carriere (p. 65), behaves in nearly the same manner, as do so 

 many tulips. 



During two consecutive years all the early flowers in a bed of 

 Tigridia conddflora 85 resembled those of the old T. pavonin ; but 

 the later flowers assumed their proper colour of fine yellow, spotted 

 with crimson. An apparently authentic account has been published 86 

 of two forms of Hemerocallis, which have been universally con- 

 sidered as distinct species, changing into each other ; for the roots 

 of the large-flowered tawny 11. fulva, being divided and planted in 

 a different soil and place, produced the small-flowered H. Jiava, as 

 well as some intermediate forms. It is doubtful whether such 

 cases as these latter, as well as the " flushing " of broken tulips and 

 the " running " of particoloured carnations, — that is, their more or 

 less complete return to a uniform tint, — ought to be classed under 

 bud-variation, or ought to be retained for the chapter in which I 

 treat of the direct action of the conditions of life on organic beings. 

 These cases, however, have this much in bud-variation, that the 

 change is effected through buds and not through seminal re- 

 production. But, on the other hand, there is this difference— that 

 in ordinary cases of bud- variation, one bud alone changes, whilst in 

 the foregoing cases all the buds on the same plant were modified 

 together. With the potato, we have seen an intermediate case, for 

 all the eyes in one tuber simultaneously changed their character. 



I will conclude with a few allied cases, which may be ranked 

 either under bud-variation, or under the direct action of the 

 conditions of life. When the common Hepatica is transplanted from 



82 Loudon's ' Encyclopedia of Gar- 1812, p. 55. 



dening,' p. 1024. 85 « Gard. Chron.,' 1849, p. 565. 



83 4 Production des Varietes,' 1865, 86 ' Transact. Linn. Soc.,' vol. ii. p. 

 p. 63. 354. 



84 'Gard. Chroa,* 1841, p. 782; 



