ON THE CAMASSIA 



enabled to produce considerable improvement 

 merely by selecting individual plants that showed 

 the most desirable qualities of flower and bulb, 

 destroying the inferior ones. From the outset care- 

 ful attention was paid both to the flowers and to 

 the bulbs, as I desired to produce plants that would 

 be ornaments in the flower garden and at the same 

 time would grow enormous bulbs that would make 

 them valuable acquisitions to the vegetable garden. 



Having secured the best representatives of each 

 species and variety by selection, I began an exten- 

 sive series of hybridizing experiments. 



I found it a relatively simple matter to hybrid- 

 ize the different camassias. All the species seemed 

 to combine quite readily. 



The characteristics shown by the hybrids are 

 those that experience with other plants led one 

 to expect. In the first generation, there is relative 

 fixity, and the greater or less dominance of one 

 parent or the other. In the second generation, the 

 hybrids break up into numerous forms, varying 

 widely as to color of leaves, height of stalk, and 

 size of flowers, as well as in form and size and 

 quality of bulbs. 



Some of these hybrids of the second generation 

 produced bulbs smaller than those of their 

 progenitors. 



But others grew bulbs of enormous size. Even 



[245] 



