ON FOUR DOORYARD FLOWERS 



and prolific bearing and the beauty of its flower. 

 But seedlings grown from the plant could not be 

 depended upon to produce flowers that would 

 reproduce the Mayflower odor. Indeed they could 

 not be depended on to reproduce any particular 

 characteristic of the parent plant. 



In point of fact, seedlings of the Mayflower pro- 

 duced plants bearing blossoms of almost every 

 color scarlet, crimson, almost pure white, yellow, 

 deep cobalt blue, purplish. But not one of the 

 many thousands I raised afterwards had the 

 delightful flavor of the Mayflower. 



THE MAYFLOWER ACCOUNTED FOR 



As might be inferred from its variability, the 

 fragrant verbena was a very mixed hybrid. It 

 was the outcome of hybridizing experiments in 

 which I had utilized the various races of the plant 

 under cultivation. I had not only grown and 

 crossed the ones that are in the seed catalogs, but 

 also secured seeds from all four of the original 

 species from which the cultivated verbenas have 

 been developed, collected from wild plants in 

 South America. 



It is quite unnecessary, however, to hybridize 

 the verbenas in order to secure variation, as all 

 of those that are under cultivation are themselves 

 hybrids of very mixed strain, and the plant has 

 been cultivated for a comparatively short period 



[in] 



