LUTHER BURBANK 



the best varieties so far produced quite generally 

 appear to be lacking in vitality possibly from 

 overzealousness in selection by division, the only 

 way of maintaining and multiplying any special 

 variety. 



My own experiments have largely had to do 

 with hybridizing the Oriental and the opium 

 poppies. 



Rather curiously I found that the pollen of the 

 opium poppy was ineffective when used on the 

 Oriental, yet when a reciprocal cross was effected, 

 the pollen of the Oriental being used on the opium 

 poppy, seed was produced, and a great number of 

 hybrids were soon under observation. 



In the hybrid colony, comprising more than 

 thirty thousand of these plants, there was as little 

 variation in color as is usual with the Oriental 

 poppy. None of the hybrids were double, but they 

 had several interesting qualities. 



One striking peculiarity was that the hybrid 

 poppies produced in some cases enormous seed 

 capsules, five or six times as large as the ordinary 

 seed capsule of either parent species. Yet in other 

 plants the seed capsule would be smaller than that 

 of either parent. In still other cases twin capsules 

 are produced uniformly, and with a certain num- 

 ber there was produced a mere rudiment of a 

 capsule. But the most striking of all were the 



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