CHAPTER m 



THE INHERITANCE OF FOUR OTHER CHARACTERS OF 

 THE CULINARY PEA STUDIED BY MENDEL 



Mendel also made crosses between peas which 

 differed from one another in other characters than 

 those of tallness or dwarfness. 



Another character with which he dealt was the 

 position of the flowers on the stem. These either 

 arise, in the ordinary way, from the whole length of 

 the stem, above the point, on the stem, where they 

 begin; or they are all bunched together at the top. 

 Fig. 7 shows the former, ordinary, arrangement of 

 the flowers, which is characteristic of all the varieties 

 of peas commonly grown for the kitchen. Fig. 8 

 shows the latter, in which they are bunched together 

 at the top. The photographs were taken late in the 

 year, so that pods are shown instead of flowers. 



I have described these two types of pea in terms 

 of the position of their flowers. But the difference 

 between the two lies deeper than this. In a normal 

 stem the flowers are given off at successive nodes 

 up the stem. The node at which the first one is 

 given off varies greatly in the different kinds of peas. 

 But the essential point is that, in the normal stem, the 

 nodes follow one another at fairly regular intervals ; 

 the actual distance between them depending usually 



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