New York Agricultural Experiment Station. 395 



Three varieties out of the 804 catalogued in this Bulletin have 

 probably originated as bud-mutations. Each of these three dif- 

 fers from its parent only in the color of the fruit and ought to be 

 rated as a strain rather than as a distinct varietv. Each not 

 only so strongly resembles the parent as scarcely to be distin- 

 guished from it, but answers the same purpose, is adapted to the 

 same environment and will probably sell in the markets under the 

 parental name, though in two of the three cases the apples ought 

 to sell better by reason of the higher color. 



The three apples are Banks, a bright red mutation of Graven- 

 stein, 'Collamer, a highly colored offshoot of Twenty Ounce, and 

 Red Russet, the well known russet variation of Baldwin. The 

 first two strains are improvements on the parents but the russet 

 Baldwin has no merits superior to its parent. In the last case, at 

 least, the strain is not well fixed, since buds from Russet Baldwins 

 occasionally produce normal Baldwins and individual trees are re- 

 ported in which part of the product is russet and the remainder 

 the normal red. 



It is possible that Green and Yellow Newtown and Black Ben 

 Davis and Gano are related as parent and mutant offspring. At 

 the most, however, there is only the slightest possible distinction — 

 a case of tweedledum and tweedledee — in either of the two pairs. 

 In neither pair is there a claim as to which was parent or which 

 offshoot. The high color in Yellow Newtown and Black Ben 

 Davis, if it exist, would in most markets be a commercial asset. 



As the writer has tried to show elsewhere, 1 deviations from 

 type which can be perpetuated are exceedingly rare. Fluctuating 

 variations due to environment there are in countless numbers, but 

 these are not known to be transmitted and probably disappear 

 with a change in environment. 



The introduction of some fluctuating variation or a new variety 

 is not uncommon in apples, this catalog furnishing several ex- 

 amples. Thus, Improved Wagener, heralded as a " pedigreed " 

 strain of the common Wagener differs not a whit from its parent 



IN. Y. Agr. Expt. Sta. Bui. 350: pp. 146 to 151. 1912. 



