THE WINTER RHUBARB 



vegetables and fruits — summer apples and winter 

 apples furnish a familiar illustration. 



Perhaps someone had discovered a root of 

 rhubarb that chanced to have peculiar qualities 

 of hardiness, and had propagated it until he had 

 a variety that began bearing while the relatively 

 mild New Zealand winter was still in progress. 



But this is only the beginning of the story. The 

 sequel appears when we reflect that the season 

 that constitutes winter in New Zealand is coinci- 

 dent with the summer time of the Northern 

 Hemisphere. 



So when we say that the crimson rhubarb was 

 productive during the winter in its original home, 

 this is equivalent to saying that it had the habit of 

 bearing during our summer time. Transplanted 

 to California, the New Zealand product continued 

 to put forth its stalks, quite in accordance with its 

 hereditary traditions, during what, according to 

 its ancestral calendar, was the winter season, 

 although the climatic conditions that now sur- 

 rounded it were those of summer. 



The Influence of Environment 



But meantime this plant, like every other living 

 organism, was of course subject to the directly 

 stimulative influence of its environment. Its 

 hereditary traditions had developed what we may 

 speak of as an instinctive tendency to grow at a 



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