222 Tall Bearded Iris 



the shape and color (deep violet) of Kochi and the other 

 segments the shape and color (milk-white) of Floren- 

 tina. At Stager Place a chance seed of Pare de Neuilly 

 (see Fig. II, page 38), planted in 1919, produced a 

 plant in 1920 which in 1921 produced two flower stems. 

 One stem bore five white flowers, each greatly resembl- 

 ing Florentina (see Fig. XXXIII, page 138) in shape 

 of segments. The other stem bore seven flowers, each 

 greatly resembling Pare de Neuilly in color (plum- 

 purple) and shape of segments. Sometimes a char- 

 acter is intensified (as, tallness in Virginia Moore). 

 Generally, however, it seems that a hybrid may well 

 be expected to develop in a blended condition at least 

 some of the characters of each parent. 



Where a character not shown by a parent appears 

 in a plant, usually it is but a recurrence of a character 

 of a distant ancestor, which theretofore for genera- 

 tions had remained latent; sometimes it is merely a 

 temporary variation of a pre-existing character, re- 

 sulting from environment or cultivation (see under 

 Fluctuations, page 149). Occasionally, however, not 

 often, it is hardly to be accounted for except by re- 

 garding it as a new character, or at least as an inheri- 

 table variation of a pre-existing character, resulting 

 from some cause — which no one has yet been able 

 either to determine or explain — operating in the de- 

 velopment of the germ of the seed from which the 

 plant was produced, or in the vegetative parts of the 

 plant (as a bud on the rhizome). Such occasional 

 plants are called, in ordinary language, "sports", but 

 to scientists they are known as "mutations". For 



