THE GLADIOLUS 27 



hybrid offspring, overshadowing the less fixed 

 colors. Still the races of gladioli are so 

 blended, and their color factors so mixed, that 

 one may confidently expect to find new and 

 interesting combinations among any large lot 

 of hybrid seedlings. 



Indeed, it is not necessary to make new 

 crosses in order to get interesting new types, 

 since, as we have seen, all cultivated races of 

 gladiolus are hybrids that carry many racial 

 strains, and hence manifest the tendency to vary 

 that we have seen everywhere manifested by 

 hybrids in second and later generations. 



It is of course possible to exert a powerful 

 directive influence through selecting parents for 

 crossing, and further direction may be given by 

 selection among the seedlings for any given 

 color or combination of colors. So new races 

 with unique color combinations may be very 

 readily developed, and, even if these are not at 

 once fixed, they can of course be propagated in- 

 definitely by bulb multiplication. Here, as with 

 other plants, all forms grown from the offshoots 

 of a bulb will reproduce the qualities of the 

 parent form, and a new race may thus be multi- 

 plied indefinitely. 



Notwithstanding the great diversity of colors 

 of the different races of gladiolus, there have 



