468 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956 



the laboratory, and the experimental plot (Epling and Lewis, 1942). 

 Burton Anderson and I (1954) have made an exhaustively detailed 

 analysis of the variation pattern of several populations, confirming 

 and extending Epling's conclusions. 



These two species of sage are so unlike that any ordinary amateur 

 would immediately recognize them as radically different plants ; only 

 an occasional botanist would see that they are really quite closely 

 related and that their differences, though conspicuous, are superficial. 

 This was what first drew Epling's attention to them. He found that 

 they hybridized readily when artificially cross-pollinated. The hy- 

 brids grew vigorously in an experimental plot and were fertile enough 

 to produce abundant and variable offspring. In spite of this 

 fertility, hybrids were ordinarily not found in nature or occurred 

 mainly at spots where the native vegetation had been greatly altered 

 by man's activities. Yet on the rocky slopes where they were native, 

 these two kinds of sage frequently grew intermingled. Burton An- 

 derson and I worked with samples of wild populations of both species 

 so intensively that eventually we could distinguish between mongrels, 

 seven of whose great-grandparents were from one species and one from 

 the other, and plants with all eight grandparents from one species. 

 With this yardstick we learned that, though the plants on the moun- 

 tainside were prevailingly of one species or the other, yet along the 

 pathway from which we collected them we could find a few mongrels. 

 These were mostly plants closely resembling typical Salvia mellifera 

 but showing slight indications of S. apiana in one character or another. 

 Apparently the very rare hybrids which Epling had found were not 

 completely without issue. Some of them had crossed back to S. melli- 

 fera, and, of these three-quarter bloods, a few of those similar to the 

 recurrent parent had been able to fend for themselves. 



At one point along the path we found conspicuous hybrids resem- 

 bling those produced by Epling; careful investigation of this area 

 gave us new understanding. With repeated visits we gradually real- 

 ized that these bizarre mongrels were limited to a definitely circum- 

 scribed plot having a greatly altered habitat. It was at a point where 

 the trail swung down along the slope. Originally a forest of live 

 oaks had abutted on the rocky, sunny slopes where the salvias grow. 

 The oaks had been cut and a small olive orchard planted and then 

 abandoned — abandoned so long ago that native plants had flowed in 

 and the whole site looked quite natural. A collection of salvias made 

 exclusively from among the olives was almost entirely hybrids and 

 hybrid descendants. Though the bulk of the plants looked somewhat 

 like Salvia apiana, there was not a single plant which in all its char- 

 acters agreed exactly with the apiana outside this plot. Further- 

 more, they resembled artificial backcrosses in that their differences 



