LUTHER BURBANK 



I have always been fond of the columbines 

 because of their numerous species, and their wide 

 range of color variation; also because of the curi- 

 ous shape of the flower and the tendency of the 

 spurs to vary greatly in length, as well as in their 

 tendency to open out in some cases, and in others 

 to remain partially closed. There is, indeed, one 

 old cultivated variety which has lost the spurs 

 altogether. 



I made at one time some interesting experi- 

 ments with this spurless kind of columbine, cross- 

 ing it with many others, especially with one known 

 as the coemlea, which has very large flowers of 

 beautiful shades of blue. The hybrids of this spur- 

 less form with the other species produced beau- 

 tiful large climatis-like flowers, some of them 

 three or four inches in diameter. 



Perhaps the most interesting feature of the 

 experiment was that the hybrids were entirely 

 spurless. This shows that the condition of spur- 

 lessness, which is an anomaly presumably of re- 

 cent origin, inasmuch as the spurs are a character- 

 istic feature of the flowers of the wild columbines, 

 acts as a dominant factor in heredity. This, of 

 course, is what should be expected if it be true 

 that the newly developed characteristics of a plant 

 are dominant over the older ones. But the case of 

 the columbines furnishes another interesting cor- 



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