2 3 2 PLANT-BREEDING 



yellow. During my last visit one of the seedlings, however, 

 opened its sheath with a purple color, reminding us of its 

 forefathers, Rehmannii and Nelsonii, with their pink, rose, 

 and purplish hues. But in this hybrid the color was deep- 

 ened, covering almost the whole of the flower, and was thus 

 evidently improved. 



Hybrid poppies are liable to reversions, also. Burbank 

 crossed the oriental poppy, which is a perennial herb, with 

 the snow-white, double and fringed flowers of "the Bride" 

 and some other varieties of the common opium poppy. I 

 have already referred to these crosses and their high degree 

 of variability. On my last visit, I saw a large bed in full 

 bloom repeating almost all the known color varieties of 

 double poppies, and varying in many other directions. He 

 also crossed this Bride variety and some others with a wild 

 and scarcely cultivated smaller species, the Papaver pilosum, 

 which has pale orange flowers. Among the offspring some 

 were fringed and some double, but the most curious fact was 

 that some produced colors not intermediate between, or like, 

 those of the varieties named, but returning to the original 

 type of the whole somniferum species. The special causes 

 of these atavistic reversions, however, remained obscure. 



Bud sports are one of the most typical kinds of sports. 

 Burbank cultivated one of them. It was the Pierce's grape, 

 which originated, some time ago, as a branch on an Isabella 

 grape on Mr. Pierce's farm at Santa Clara, Cal. It is well 

 known for its large and superior fruit. It comes true from 

 seed but is liable to sport in this way from time to time. The 

 sporting seedlings differed from the average in the shape, 

 color, and hairiness of their foliage and in their mode of 

 growth; but, at the time when I inspected them, they were 

 still too young to produce fruit. 



Other bud sports Burbank has not observed; so he told 

 me. Of course, the sports with variegated leaves are to be 



