ON POPPIES 



seeds of this plant preserved and sowed by them- 

 selves the following season to make the basis of a 

 quite different series of selective experiments. 



The history of this new colony duplicated that 

 of other groups of plants undergoing selection. 

 Year by year I found an increasing proportion of 

 flowers with the smoky hue, and always among 

 these a few that revealed the obscure blue pigment 

 a little more clearly. 



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 or 

 seemingly mixed with black pigment, and others 

 with fairly clear, if not very bright, blue color. 



The few flowers that were pure blues were nat- 

 urally selected to continue the experiment. But 

 their seedlings for the most part failed to repro- 

 duce 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 uniform 

 blueness. This, of course, is the patch referred to 

 as exciting the astonished comment of florists that 

 visit my grounds at Santa Rosa about the first of 

 June each season. 



On closer inspection of the plot of blue flowers, 



[117] 



