424 The Journal 
Willits after the Assistant Secretary of 
Agriculture. 
“No. 3 (also a wheat-rye hybrid) has been 
named Roberts after Prof. I. P. Roberts, of 
Cornell University.” 
Although the names applied augured 
well for these wheats, they apparently 
proved of little commercial value and 
so far as the writer knows, are not in 
existence as varieties grown anywhere 
today. 
Turning now to the “nearly sterile 
plant,’’ or the one that ‘“‘most resembled 
rye” (Fig. 14),4 of the nine described 
above, it is evident from the illustration 
and descriptions that it was neither 
wheat nor rye, but had the modified 
characters of each. The shape and 
general appearance of the head, the 
arrangement and number of spikelets, 
and the glume characters were all such 
as are commonly found in wheat-rye 
hybrids. The culm resembled that of 
rye, except in color, having the whitish 
down near the head which never appears 
in wheat. This plant bore ten heads® 
which produced but nineteen kernels, 
thus being nearly sterile. All of these 
characters combined allow no question 
of this plant being actually a hybrid 
between wheat and rye. 
MUCH VARIATION IN PROGENY 
The grains produced by this plant 
were carefully sown and fourteen or 
fifteen plants resulted, which passed 
safely through the winter and produced 
altogether 107 heads, the single plants 
having from two to thirteen heads. As 
shown by an illustration which Carman 
published, they are all rather long, 
tapering, slender, and _half-bearded, 
with more spikelets than in wheat, in 
their appearance giving abundant evi- 
dence of rye relationship. The char- 
acteristic hairiness on the culm beneath 
the head is depicted in each case, 
although such hairs might theoretically 
be lacking in some of the plants in this 
second generation: Some of the plants 
were feeble in growth and partly sterile. 
Others were remarkably vigorous in 
growth, with strong stems and many 
heads. Some ripened with the earliest 
wheats, others continued green until 
of Heredity 
after the latest wheats had matured. 
The seeds varied in size, some being even 
larger than wheat, but as a whole they 
appeared to be wheat and yet had 
somewhat the shape of rye. 
Rejecting all inferior heads, enough 
grain was saved from the best to plant 
a plat of about 1/30 (or 1/20) acre, 
that is, single kernels in the inter- 
sections of 10-inch squares. Regarding 
the crop grown Carman writes: “It is 
a matter of very great surprise to us 
that in this plat there is such a variety 
of heads that if evidence were suddenly 
placed before us that all of the varieties 
of wheat in cultivation sprang from 
accidental crosses between rye and 
wheat, we should accept it as in har- 
mony with the appearance of these 
plants. The down does not appear upon 
the culms of some, while others are 
covered more thickly than the parent 
stems. The straws of some of the plants 
are three times the thickness of ordinary 
wheat straws. Some of the heads are 
beardless, others as much bearded as 
barley. Some heads are of the shape of 
Clawson, or the female parent Arm- 
strong (tapering); others are club- 
headed, with and without beards. Some 
of the heads are compound. Our 
readers must remember that this twen- 
tieth of an acre of plants, so strongly 
dissimilar, all originated from a single 
seed, one of the ten kernels which 
four years ago was the result of crossing 
rye upon wheat.”’ 
The New York World in 1886 con- 
tained this description of the plants in 
this plat: 
“Some of the plants were dwarf, not over 
2% feet high, with culms thrice as heavy as 
any ever seen in the pure wheats. Heads 
7 inches long were not uncommon. Some 
were bearded heavily, others were beardless, 
and still others showed every intermediate 
stage. Some were club-headed, with breasts or 
spikelets densely crowded towards the top. 
Some bore compound spikelets, that is, two 
breasts growing instead of one, and the head 
partially double-breasted on each side of the 
rachis. Some heads were shapely, others 
twisted, with long, curly awns and culms as 
crooked as the heads. Some heads were larger 
and contained more kernels than any wheats 
we have ever seen growing in this climate. 
Others were feeble, narrow heads, scarcely 2 
‘The portrait is true, except that the beards are nearly twice as long asshown.”’ (43: 557.) 
5A later account states ‘14 heads” and “17 grains.” 
