The Origin of Striped Flozvcrs. 117 



white flowers with red stripes, I have seen a head whose 

 outer ray florets were dark red whilst the inner ones 

 formed a disc of pure white with only very occasional 

 red stripes. In the center the unmodified fertile yellow 

 disc florets were seen. I have observed the same phe- 

 nomenon in a few other cases. 



The striped varieties of Cyclaiiicn pcrsiciun are said 

 to bear in some instances only variegated flowers one 

 year and from the same bulb uniformly colored atavistic 

 flowers the next year. 



Centaurca Cyanns, the blue corn flower or blue bottle, 

 has a brown variety with double flowerheads wdiich is 

 highly variable in color; it is far from being fixed yet, 

 as a plantbreeder in Erfurt expressed it to me. I culti- 

 vated it for five years, always selecting the purest and 

 darkest brown specimens in small numbers as seed- 

 parents. The race produced reversions to the blue form 

 every year. Some plants bore blue flowers exclusively, in 

 others the blue color appeared in segments or in stripes 

 on some of the heads. No advance was brought about 

 by this selection. 



The examples given must suffice to show the impor- 

 tance of the striped flowers of horticulture. A Var. 

 striata of a number of species is advertised in the cata- 

 logues ; it is open to any one, therefore, to cultivate them. 

 The Var. alba of many other species often reveals on 

 closer inspection scattered stripes of the color of the 

 parent species; these stripes can easily be intensified by 

 isolation and selection as I shall show in one of the 

 following sections (§ 16). 



Striped flowers^ are also of great importance in the 



^ Spotted flowers may possibly behave differently ; but up to the 

 present time I have not grown them. 



