384 THE WHEAT PLANT 



In regard to the fertile wheat-like plants obtained and cultivated by 

 Fabre on an extensive scale he held a novel opinion. Their fertility and 

 morphological stability over twenty or more generations led him to con- 

 clude that these were not of hybrid origin, but the descendants of a new, 

 rare, and unrecorded species of Aegilops, distinct from A. triticoides, but 

 easily confused with it. 



To this imaginary species he gave the name A. speltaeformis , and 

 suggested that it had found its way unobserved into the south of France 

 from the East along the Mediterranean. 



The plant is annual, with broad, flat, green, or glaucescent leaves, 

 similar to those of ordinary wheat. The straw is from 60 to 100 cm. high, 

 with an erect rigid ear, w r hich when ripe falls off as a whole. The ears 

 are about 10 cm. long (3, Fig. 223), consisting of 10-12 somewhat inflated 

 flowered spikelets, 2 or 3 of the flowers frequently fertile. The empty 

 glume is keeled, truncate, with an awn 3-4 times as long as the glume 

 and usually 2 lateral teeth of variable length. The flowering glume is 

 obtuse, truncate, with an awn 4 times as long as the glume and 2 short 

 lateral teeth. The grain is oblong, oval, brownish, and angular with a 

 deep furrow. 



A. speltaeformis has rarely, if ever, been found wild either in France or 

 in the East, and Godron's view that it is a derivative hybrid produced by 

 the pollination of the sterile hybrid A. triticoides with wind-borne pollen 

 of wheat has been generally accepted. Its non-establishment in a wild 

 state Godron explains by the fact that its fallen ears and spikelets have 

 not the power of burying themselves in the ground like those of A. ovata 

 and A. triticoides, and soon perish after germination unless artificially 

 covered with soil. 



Godron states that Fabre obtained grains from ears of A. triti- 

 coides, which produced the very different and more robust A. speltae- 

 formis. Greenland also grew the latter plant from a grain of an ear 

 of A. triticoides gathered on the edge of a field near Agde by Dr. 

 Thevenau. 



The derivation of A. speltaeformis by artificial crossing of A. triticoides 

 with wheat was proved by Godron in 1858, and again in 1860, but the 

 cross is apparently very difficult, for no other botanist has been successful 

 with it. failures being recorded by Regel, Tschermak, and Bally. 



Some of the hybrids are completely sterile, others ripen a few grains, 

 from which more fertile plants arise ; these in turn ripen more grain in 

 succeeding generations, until plants are obtained completely fertile and 

 indistinguishable from ordinary wheat. 



The increasing fertility and closer resemblance to wheat in succeeding 

 generations observed by Fabre and by Durieu de Maisonneuve, who con- 

 tinued its cultivation without interruption for twenty-two years, has been 



