238 The Pedigree Families. 



the second leaf had appeared in well manured soil and at 

 a good distance apart. They were about 6 weeks old 

 when I finally identified them. 



The rosettes nearly always bore a stem in the first 

 year; I only obtained biennial plants by sowing the seed 

 late or by crowding. The biennial form is richly branched ; 

 the annual has very few lateral branches (Fig. 45). The 

 internodes are numerous and very short, the broad short- 

 stalked leaves are therefore much crowded.^ The petioles 

 are brittle. The first flowers often open when the plant 

 has scarcely reached a height of 10 centimeters; after 

 their first appearance flowers are usually born at regular 

 intervals but sometimes sporadically. The flowers are 

 almost as big as those of O. Lamarckiana ; so that the 

 plant in flower is very showy. The fruits are not per- 

 ceptibly smaller than those of the parent species. 



In order to protect the first flowers from the visits 

 of insects I enclosed the whole plant in a bag of parch- 

 ment, the margin of which is attached to a metal ring 

 which is firmly pressed into the ground. It is not until 

 the inflorescences have attained a considerable length 

 that the flowers can be enclosed in parchment bags in the 

 ordinary way. 



The first dwarfs I fertilized in this way were some 

 which flowered in 1893. Their ancestors which had not 

 been protected from the visits of insects and only in- 

 completely isolated had notwithstanding this, already ex- 

 hibited a high degree of constancy. The seeds collected 

 in 1893 gave rise to 440 seedlings which were all nanella. 



In 1895 I self-fertilized a series of dwarfs which 

 arose in the fourth generation of my Lamar ckiana-ia.m'i\y 



^ The characteristics of the dwarfs are in part due to a disease; 

 see § i8 (Note of 1908). 



