202 REPORT OF THE CONFERENCE ON GENETICS, 
The original plant refused to flower in a pot. Plants propagated 
from it were planted out in the open, and after passing through the 
winter unprotected they flowered the following summer. The flower- 
shoots (fig. 48) are very numerous and attain a height of 2 feet 9 inches. 
The flowering period lasts a long time. 
The leaves have assumed the parental characters in a remarkably 
intermediate degree ; the lobing is more pronounced than in C. ragusina, 
and less than in C. Scabiosa. The leaves of the seed-parent are snow- 
white by reason of the felted coat of hairs; the adult leaves of the pollen- 
parent are green, with a few hairs of the same kind along with stouter 
ones. In the young leaves of C. Scabiosa the felt-forming hairs are fairly 
abundant. In the young leaves of the hybrid the hairs are so numerous as 
to render them white, in the adult ones they are sufficiently plentiful 
to give a distinctly tomentose appearance. 
The capitula are of fair size, creamy-orange, shaded into salmon at 
the centre, some of the purple of the pollen-parent being mingled with 
the yellow of the seed-parent. 
The peripheral neuter flowers are comparatively few in number and 
very inconspicuous. They form a single whorl and project + to 3 inch 
beyond the involucre. They are often hidden by being overtopped or 
pressed down by the neighbouring florets. The anthers of the herma- 
phrodite disk florets may project a little beyond the corolla. The styles 
elongate and carry the stigmas + inch above the corolla. The pollen is 
fairly abundant, but most inferior in quality ; in fact, in the examples 
examined, not a single normal grain was to be found. This hybrid is 
quite sterile. 
Brassica oleracea var. x B. Sinapistrum. 
Unusual interest attaches to a hybrid having curled kale as seed- 
parent and charlock as pollen-parent. Six seeds, the contents of three 
capsules, were sown together, and five of them germinated. One of the 
. seedlings proved to be more like a cabbage cross than anything else, and 
could not be accounted for on any ground except that it had been the 
result of self-pollination of one of the flowers experimented with. The 
other four seedlings were alike and soon betokened hybrid characters, 
One was potted, two planted out, and the fourth left in the seed-bed. 
They all, at an early stage, looked very similar to charlock. They shot 
into flower when quite young, and continued to flower throughout the 
whole season, until stopped by frost. 
When in full vigour, the taller one of the two planted out reached the 
height of 5 feet, the mass of bloom being 2} feet through. Nine flowers 
were occasionally found open at one time on a single inflorescence. This 
plant and its neighbour (fig. 44) were striking objects, being freely 
branched, well furnished with leaves, and topped by very numerous 
flowers, while crosses of the same age between curled kale and Brussels 
sprouts and the like were in the usual compact vegetative condition of the 
first season. , 
The leaves (fig. 45) partook strongly of the charlock characters 
(fig. 45c), but were larger, firmer in texture, and more glaucous. The 
inflorescence was a long raceme. The flowers (fig. 46 5), bright yellow, 
