VOLUME LXVI ~° ; NUMBER 4 
THE 
DOTANICAL Gazer 
OCTOBER 1918 
A CONTRIBUTION TO THE LIFE HISTORY OF 
IMPATIENS SULTANI 
ALIcEeE M. OTTLEY 
(WITH PLATES XIV, XV) 
This paper is based upon a study of slides made through a 
series of years for class use in the Botany Department of Wellesley 
College. The material was taken from greenhouse plants of the 
rose or bright pink variety of Impatiens Sultani Hook. The bright 
red and light pink varieties also were growing in the greenhouse, 
but care was taken to collect material from the rose-flowered 
plants only. Some of the plants from which the flowers were 
collected were chance seedlings. No attempt was made to deter- 
mine whether or not these were a pure strain of the rose-colored 
form. In Battey’s (4) Standard Cyclopedia of Horticulture the 
original form of J. Sultani is given as a rich scarlet, shades ranging 
from pink to almost purple being found on hybrids or sports. If 
this be true, then all the rose-colored forms used for this study are 
either hybrids or sports. 
According to BaILey the species J. Sudtani was originally found 
in Zanzibar and named by Hooker in honor of the Sultan of 
Zanzibar. In ENGLER and Prantt’s Die Natiirlichen Pflanzen- 
familien (16) it is cited from Sierra Leone, Western Africa. It is 
Stated in Gray’s Manual that the Balsaminaceae often contain 
two kinds of flowers, the large showy ones which rarely ripen 
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