LUTHER BURBANK 



ental poppy was used as the pistillate parent; but 

 this is only conjectural. Also, the opium poppy 

 has been so long under cultivation, and has become 

 so adaptable, that it perhaps is more pliable and 

 more ready to receive strange pollen. 



The relative sterility of the first-generation 

 hybrids may be judged from the fact that almost 

 five thousand seedlings produced ten or twelve gal- 

 lons of capsules, but that there was only about a 

 quarter of a teaspoonful of seed to each gallon of 

 capsules. 



As these seeds were shrunken and much 

 smaller than ordinary poppy seeds, however, the 

 actual number of seeds was proportionately large. 

 Still the total number was only a fraction of what 

 would have been the output of poppy plants of 

 normal fertility. 



All in all, this experiment of hybridizing the 

 Oriental and the opium poppies, with the produc- 

 tion of relatively infertile hybrids showing Mende- 

 lian heredity as to some traits and a blending of 

 characters as to others, and a further segregation 

 and recombination of characters in the second 

 generation, constitutes an unusually interesting 

 experiment in heredity. I have made many other 

 experiments in breeding the various poppies, but 

 none perhaps that excelled this one in interest and 

 importance. 



[166] 



