AN INTERESTING STRAWBERRY PEDIGREE 



THERE probably is no plant 

 breeder who has not been much 

 disappointed over the results of 

 some particular cross which, 

 from the history of the parents in- 

 volved, had given every promise of 

 fruitful returns; on the other hand it 

 sometim.es happens that parental varie- 

 ties whose pedigrees seem to contain 

 nothing of particular promise yield 

 results of surprising value. A rather 

 remarkable example of this appealed 

 this year at the Experiment Station 

 at Geneva, N. Y. 



During the winter of 1889-90 C. E. 

 Hunn, then acting horticulturist, pol- 

 linated the Johnson Late Strawberry 

 with Sharpless. The female parent 

 was a seedling of unknown origin sent 

 to the station for test by a man named 

 Johnson. Beyond being very late it 

 did not prove of special promise and 

 was soon discarded. Several seedlings 

 were secured from this cross and these 

 formed part of a lot of more than four 

 hundred which fruited in 1893. The 

 only, one which eventually seemed 

 worthy of retaining was one of these 

 Johnson Late seedlings. This was 

 named Hunn in honor of its originator. 

 In 1898 Hunn was pollinated by At- 

 lantic, a chance seedling from New 

 Jersey of no remarkable value. The 

 seedlings from this cross were grown 

 in competition with about five hundred 

 others and only one survived. This 

 was named Quality. When Quality 

 was grown in other localities it proved 

 disappointing, and so was discarded, 

 but not until seedlings of it were se- 



cured by self-pollination in 1907. None 

 of these seedlings was found worthy of 

 extended trial, but two of them, one 

 perfect (with both stamens and pistils) 

 and one imperfect (with pistils only), 

 were retained in a study of sex. In 

 this work the perfect was self-polli- 

 nated and the imperfect fertilized by 

 the perfect. The resulting seedlings 

 fruited for the first time this summer. 



The seedlings of the selfed perfect 

 were lacking in vigor, shy in yield, 

 with small berries. The other seed- 

 lings obtained from the sister plant 

 pollinated by this same perfect were 

 one of the most remarkable collections 

 that the station has obtained from a 

 single strawberry cross. The plants 

 were large and v^ery vigorous and ex- 

 tremely productive with fruit above 

 medium to large in size. Out of 

 ninety seedlings in the cross twenty- 

 four have been retained for further 

 test — a proportion that has not been 

 equalled by crosses involving some of 

 the finest varieties under cultivation. 



This is one of those cases which are 

 the despair of the plant breeder because 

 they seem to follow no law; but at the 

 same time, if the breeder has some- 

 thing of the gambler's spirit and is 

 willing to toss dice with nature, it is 

 just such cases which encourage him to 

 undertake work that otherwise would 

 seem to have no justification save 

 curiosity. 



R. D. Anthony, 

 Agncultural Experiment Station, 



Geneva, N . Y . 



R. Ruggles Gates in British Military Service 



R. Ruggles Gates, author of "The 

 Mutation Factor in Evolution," who 

 left the University of California last 

 spring to enter the British Military 

 Service, is now in the Royal Flying 



Corps. He is acting as instructor in 

 machine gunnery at one of the aviation 

 schools in England. His mail address 

 is Care of University of London Club, 

 21 Gower Street, W. C, London. 



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