Plantago Lanccolata Ramosa. 157 



more numerous nnbranched ears. In the second summer 

 often almost all the ears on healthy individuals are 

 branched even when their number reaches 50-60 per 

 plant. In the first year I found that as a rule there were 

 10-20 branched ears, and sometimes as many as 30 or 

 even more occurred on each plant. In fact we may 

 assume that, on the average, and with ordinary methods 

 of cultivation, about one-third of the ears will be branched 

 during the first summer; for instance, in 1898 I found 

 amongst 439 ears on 30 individuals 136 or 31% which 

 were branched. It goes without saying that the atavistic 

 individuals were excluded from these countings. 



I have also made some direct experiments to deter- 

 mine the influence of individual vigor on the develop- 

 ment of the anomaly. In the first place I have grown 

 ^•ery weak plants and have then got them to grow stronger 

 gradually. For this purpose I made use of the plantain's 

 well-known property of producing buds from its roots. 

 As the roots are all very thin, the plantlets obtained in 

 this way are very weak at first, nor do they grow up 

 as quickly as seedlings. 



For the purpose of this experiment I selected (March 

 1893) ten plants which had had 10-25 branched ears 

 each in the previous year. I pulled them out of the 

 ground, cut ofif the mass of their roots and planted these, 

 throwing away the rosettes and any leaf-buds that might 

 be present. I put the roots of each individual straight 

 into the ground without separating them. Radical buds 

 were produced in hundreds, often so many from one 

 bundle of roots that there was not room for all of them 

 to develop. In the middle of June, that is, after about 

 three months, they began to flower. At first there were 

 onlv 40% branched ears, with onlv one or two lateral 



