TORREYA ''""^^^ 



Vol. 22 No. 3 



May and June, 1922 



SOME AMATEUR OBSERVATIONS ON COLOR-FORMS 

 By C. a. Weatherby 



When the botanizer whose activities are, like those of most 

 of us, confined to a comparatively limited area begins to feel 

 the pressure of the law of diminishing returns — when it becomes 

 harder and harder to find unfamiliar species or even new stations 

 for rare ones and he looks about for some new world to conquer — 

 then the study of the variations of color in flowers of the same 

 species offers a field of observation in which little has been done. 

 That this is the case is doubtless because color-forms have to 

 be studied in fresh material and, since they are comparatively 

 rare, it is hard for any one investigator to get hold of any very 

 large number of them in the proper condition. But if many 

 amateurs, each in his own locality, would even list and, so far 

 as possible, classify those which come under their eyes, the com- 

 bined lists could hardly fail to add considerably to our knowledge 

 in this direction. It is with the hope of starting some such 

 composite list that I have ventured to set down the results of 

 my own scattered observations. 



By color-forms I do not mean the slight variations in shade, 

 often due to difi"erences in intensity of light, which occur in all 

 colored flowers, but marked and striking changes in shade or 

 hue — marked, at least, in their extremes, for they may be con- 

 nected by intermediates with the typical forms. The searcher 

 after such variants will presently notice that they tend to fall 

 into groups — that flowers of a certain color will vary in one 

 direction and not in another. So far as my experience goes, I 

 can distinguish five lines of color variation, enumerated below. 

 Under each I have listed such examples of it as I ha\^e actually 

 seen. 



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