294 



THE GUIDE TO NATURE 



The Plant Chimera Problem. 



The Journal of Heredity (Washing- 

 ton, D. C), for December gives over 

 more than half its space to the sub- 

 ject of Plant Chimeras — a problem 

 which after some two hundred and 

 fifty years of spirited controversy 



some branches the yellow blossoms of 

 the common laburnum, on others the 

 purple blossoms of the broom, and on 

 still others a new flower that straddles 

 between the two. 



Dr. Hans Winkler, of the State Insti- 

 tute of Botany, at Hamburg, Germany, 



PROBABLE CHIMERA OF RECENT ORIGIN. 



Grapefruit from Florida which has apparently thrown out a section of orange. Such freaks are 

 "fairly common in all kinds of citrous fruits, arc! are sometimes explained as sectorial bud sports or 

 variations. 



among botanists seems at length to be 

 finally solved. 



The original chimera was a mythical 

 monster, with a lion's head and a drag- 

 on's tail attached to the body of a goat. 

 The modern chimera is a plant, or a 

 portion of a plant, made up of tissues 

 belonging to two different species. 



For example, one of the earliest 

 known cases originated in Florence, 

 Italy, in 1644, and was spread by graft- 

 ing and budding to half the botanical 

 gardens of Europe. It bore at various 

 times a mixture of orange, lemon, cit- 

 ron, and lime, with leaves and blos- 

 soms to correspond. Sometimes two 

 •or three sections of an orange would 

 be citron. Sometimes, what appeared 

 in all respects to be a lemon was an 

 orange inside. Or, to cite another fam- 

 ous case, Cytisus odami often bears on 



has at last succeeded in producing 

 these chimeras experimentally. He 

 made ordinary "cleft" or "saddle" 

 grafts of tomato and nightshade, each 

 on the other. After tne graft had 

 taken and all the wounds were healed, 

 he cut off the grafted branch in such 

 wise as to expose on the cut surface 

 about equal areas of the two stocks. 



Naturally, the cut surface promptly 

 grew shoots. When these chanced to 

 arise from nightshade tissue, the re- 

 sulting stem was common nightshade. 

 When the new shoot grew out of to- 

 mato tissue, it was pure tomato. But 

 when the new growth chanced to 

 spring from the division line between 

 the two, then the new plant was to- 

 mato on one side and nightshade on the 

 other. 



Here, then, was a true chimera. 



