July, 1914 



THE GARDEN MAGAZINE 



333 



limited field for crossing varieties and 

 species, and their recombination along 

 Mendelian lines. The Yearbook of the 

 Department of Agriculture, 191 1, makes a 

 generous offer of the services of the govern- 

 ment in securing desirable stock for the 

 plant breeder, and the world is being liter- 

 ally ransacked for seeds of promising 

 species, and every one who has a garden 

 or an orchard is asked to aid in the im- 



grow near your house?" And my answer 

 that it was sent to reward me for teaching 

 biology to so many young people was never 

 quite accepted. Surely, we were holding 

 something back! There was an ace up 

 our sleeves somewhere and we could tell 

 how it was done if we only would. A good 

 neighbor who had helped us in various 

 ways came one morning begging me to 

 show her just what it was that I put on 



making a union with the ovules of the 

 same plant impossible is one of the mys- 

 teries of mysteries. 



The practical value of this fact is at 

 once apparent, for one could hardly take 

 stamens from the bud of so small a floret; 

 and though, when there was but one sun- 

 flower plant bearing red flowers in the 

 world, so far as we knew, we regretted 

 that it was not fertile to its own pollen, 



All sorts and conditions of red sunflowers, showing 



portant work of creating new forms or 

 improving old ones. It seems hard to 

 believe that the Yearbook only states a 

 scientific fact when it says that the greatest 

 numbers of new and valuable forms are 

 produced, not in the great nurseries of the 

 world, but in smaller places where the 

 worker can be near the plants and know 

 their individual characters in a way quite 

 impossible to the wholesale experimenter. 

 Then, through Mendel's laws of inheri- 

 tance, we have learned that half a dozen 

 plants carefully watched and guarded are 

 worth more than forty acres left to the 

 bees' and butterflies' careful but indis- 

 criminate mixing. 



HOW WE MADE THE PINK SUNFLOWER 



Our first red sunflow-er was found by 

 the roadside growing among hundreds of 

 yellow ones and though we transplanted 

 it to our garden and spent three years 

 getting the pure bred type, still we were 

 obliged to confess that we had nothing to 

 do with making the first red sunflower. 

 My students inquired skeptically: "Why 

 should the only red sunflower in the world 



the sunflowers to turn them into that 

 splendid satiny red! So when we really 

 did make a new color we felt very pleased 

 for here was something that, in a certain 

 sense, at least, we had made ourselves, and 

 we like to tell how it was done, for we have 

 found the making of new varieties of sun- 

 flowers most fascinating. 



The sunflower head is made up ot many 

 small flowers. The outside rays are merely 

 for show while the inside tubular florets 

 produce the seeds. The florets blossom 

 from the outside and about one tenth are 

 ready for pollen at one time. One of the 

 first things we learned about the sunflower 

 was that it was not fertile to its own pollen. 

 I have never got over the wonder of that. 

 Why those tiny yellow grains, all looking 

 exactly alike, should have, some property 



the range of variation in th: color distribution 



it was this fact that made our later experi- 

 ments possible. 



The first red sunflower was chestnut-red, 

 the red pigment was added to the deep 

 yellow of the ordinary sunflower, and was 

 changed in appearance — just how much we 

 could not tell. We figured out that if we 

 could get the red on a white background 

 we would have a new and lovelier color. 

 Then began a search for a white sunflower, 

 up and down, through field after field, 

 and page after page of seed catalogues. 

 The best we could do was a pale primrose, 

 advertised by Sutton of Reading, England, 

 and called Primrose Perfection. This 

 plant, which comes quite true from seed, 

 has a very dark disk and pale primrose 

 yellow rays; it is a tall upright form usually 

 bearing only one flower-head. 



It. was certainly interesting to think that 

 we could obtain an entirely new color, due to 

 the redistribution of previously known fact- 

 ors, and predict in advance just what would 

 happen. Like gravitation heredity obeys 

 certain laws, and is a mighty force which can 

 be subjugated and made to do wonderful 

 work both by the plant and animal breed. 



