PRODUCING A NEW COLOR 291 



Finally, after several years of selection, I 

 had a strain in which about one-third of the 

 plants bore flowers of various shades of blue, 

 some smoky and others with fairly clear, if not 

 very bright, blue color. 



The few flowers that were pure blues were 

 naturally selected to continue the experiment. 

 But their seedlings for the most part failed to 

 reproduce the color. 



Selecting year by year, however, among the 

 individuals that produced flowers of the purest 

 blue, the strain was gradually fixed until each 

 year a plot of poppies appeared that, seen from 

 a little distance, presented the aspect of uni- 

 form blueness. This, of course, is the patch re- 

 ferred to as exciting the astonished comment of 

 florists that visit my grounds at Santa Rosa 

 about the first of June each season. 



But the effort to establish the blue variety as a 

 fixed type through inbreeding and selection has 

 been fully achieved. 



Were the poppy a plant that is propagated 

 by root cuttings or any other of the common 

 modes of division, the blue variety would long 

 since have been given to the world. But as it is 

 necessary with this plant to develop the variety 

 until it will breed true from seed, I have been 

 obliged to continue the experiment at least ten 



