12 The Journal 
other and from the rye by unsown bor- 
ders 18 inches in width. The wheat and 
rye plants growing along the common 
borders between adjoining wheat and 
rye plots thus easily may come into 
actual contact at blooming time. A few 
rye plants also usually grow among the 
wheat plants, due to volunteering of the 
rye or accidental mixing of the seed. 
These are removed before harvest, but 
after they have bloomed. Rye pollen 
is also carried by the wind for consid- 
erable distances. It is not an unusual 
sight to see such pollen being carried 
by. the wind from aé_ rye plot 
in a thin, dust-like cloud that can be 
followed by the eye for several hundred 
feet. There is little doubt that some of 
this rye pollen at some time or other 
may fall on every wheat plant in the ex- 
perimental plots. Many of the wheat 
and rye flowers bloom at the same time, 
the blooming periods of certain of the 
varieties of each coinciding to greater 
or less extent. There exists then, in the 
actual contact of wheat and rye plants 
and in the distribution 
the wind, abundant opportunity for the 
pollination of wheat flowers by rye 
pollen. 
All of these natural wheat-rye hy- 
brids have been found growing in wheat 
plots and must have had wheat plants 
as the seed parents. No such hybrids 
have been found in rye plots, although 
I have often looked for them. Neither 
has any one, so far as I am aware, ever 
made a hybrid between these two species 
in which the rye was other than the 
pollen parent. Many hybrids have been 
made, however, with rye as the pollen 
parent. 
of rye pollen by 
CHARACTERISTICS OF THE HYBRIDS 
The hybrid plants found in 1918 are 
taller than the surrounding wheat plants. 
Even the shortest culm of a hybrid plant 
is nearly always taller than the highest 
neighboring wheat culm. This. greater 
height of the hybrids facilitates their 
discovery. But the height of the hybrids 
is less than that of rye plants, being 
about intermediate in height between 
wheat and rye. 
The hybrid heads are nearly always 
of Heredity 
from 1 to 3 centimeters longer than even 
the longest nearby wheat head, and the 
number of rachis nodes of the hybrids 
is usually from a fifth to a half greater 
than in the longest wheat head. The 
hybrids here again in these two respects 
appear to be intermediate between 
wheat and rye. 
When the wheat in the plot where the 
hybrid is found is awned the hybrid is 
awned; when the wheat is awnless the 
hybrid is awnless or semi-awned. All 
rye varieties are awned, so the char- 
acters found are what would be ex- 
pected in F, hybrids between wheat and 
Tye: 
The chaff color of the hybrids is light 
brown in all cases where the wheat of 
the plot has brown chaff. In most cases 
it is white where that of the wheat is 
white, but in a few cases the hybrid 
heads are light brown where the wheat 
chaff was either white or white with a 
mixture of brown or light brown heads. 
In these few cases the chaff of either 
the wheat or rye parent may have been 
Peon brownish in color, as rye 
oe wines 
heads often have chaff of a darker 
brown than that of any of the hybrids, 
The peduncle of the rye plant is usu- 
ally rough and pubescent or hairy 
for some distance, usually an inch 
or more, below its junction with 
the spike or head. It is also solid 
for about the same distance downward. 
Plants with entirely smooth peduncle 
are found occasionally, in certain va- 
rieties rather frequently. 
Common wheat has a smooth, hollow 
peduncle of greater diameter than that 
of rye. These hybrids, with the excep- 
tion of three, have the upper portions of 
the peduncles more or less roughened 
and hairy, but less so than is usual in 
rye. The three exceptions have smooth 
peduncles as in wheat. The diameter of 
the hybrid peduncles is greater than rye 
and less than or equal to wheat, while 
usually they have thicker walls and re- 
duced cavity in comparison with wheat. 
In the smaller culms the peduncles may 
be solid near the head. There is usually 
strong evidence of both wheat and rye 
parentage in the peduncles of the hy- 
brids. 
