Variegated Leaves. 265 



half race were stil! continued, the double race would 

 some day appear quite suddenly, and that it would then, 

 after a short but sufficient isolation, persist as a constant, 

 though highly variable, race.^ 



§ 24. VARIEGATED LEAVES. 



Variegated plants have long been great favorites in 

 the garden, and their great instability has contributed 

 largely to the development of the horticultural concep- 

 tion of a variety, for the variations in their col(.)r pattern 

 are practically unlimited. Hardly any two leaves are 

 alike, and many species have a whole series of dappled 

 and flecked varieties. They also possess the striking 

 property of continually and conspicuously reverting to 

 the species to which they belong. Such reversions occur 

 either amongst seedlings or as bud-variations, and since 

 on shrubs and trees these latter often remain for many 

 years and not rarely in more than one instance on the 

 same plant, they can be seen by every one. In this way 

 these bud-variations have come to be regarded as a suf- 

 ficient proof of the idea that varieties are derivative and 

 unstable structures, which always tend to revert to their 

 parent species. 



Especially in the first half of the eighteenth century 

 were plants with speckled and striped leaves very much 

 sought after.^ About that time the well-known English 

 gardener Thomas Fairchild possessed more than one 

 hundred varieties of them in his garden, and afterwards 

 ScHLECiiTENDAHL published a list from which it can 

 be seen that variegation is distributed over the whole 



^T. e., as an eversporting variety with a wide amplitude of varia- 

 tion which however would not alter in the course of the generations. 



'Meyen, PHanzen-Patholog'ic , 1841, p 282. 



