MUTATIONS 



279 



very short styles and was named brevistylis. Each differed somewhat 

 with respect to other characters as well (see Fig. 115) but were named for 

 their most striking difference from the parent species. De Vries next 

 proceeded to hunt for more new forms. By transplanting rosettes from 

 the original locality to his garden he carefully compared them when they 

 flowered the second year and saved guarded seed from the "mutants" 

 so that he might test the inheritance of the new forms. He also gathered 

 seed from two different lamarckiana plants in the open and these were 

 the source of his lamarckiana "families." Of one of these families he 

 raised several thousand plants from self-fertilized seed in each generation 

 for seven generations and in each successive population he discovered 

 a number of "mutants." This experiment is summarized in 

 Table XLIV. 



TABLE XLIV. PEDIGREE OF A FAMILY OF (E. LAMARCKIANA, 1886-1899 



This summary shows that among a total of some 50,000 seedlings of 

 self-fertilized lamarckiana plants seven different new forms appeared 

 with varying frequency. The first two to be recognized and isolated 

 for testing were nanella and lata (see Fig. 116). The dwarf variety, 

 nanella, was also found blooming among the typical lamarckiana plants 

 at the original station and these plants, like those dwarfs that appeared 

 in the experimental garden, always bred true if self-fertilized. Lata 

 on the other hand proved to be self-sterile because entirely devoid of 

 viable pollen. When fertilized with lamarckiana pollen it produced 15 

 to 20 per cent, of lata and the remainder lamarckiana. Later on de 

 Vries discovered a hybrid strain of lata that produced some viable pollen 

 and when self-fertilized these plants produced the same proportion of 

 lata and lamarckiana progeny. For this reason de Vries considers it an 

 inconstant species. In the third generation another new form appeared, 

 which unlike nanella and lata was more robust than lamarckiana. It 



