VARIATION AND HEREDITY IN LUPINUS 



DR. LEON^AS L. BUELINGAME 

 Stan-ford University, Cal. 



The great majority of genetic investigations have been 

 carried on with domesticated plants that have been long 

 under cultivation. There are, of course, many entirely 

 good reasons for this fact. It has, however, always 

 seemed to the author that the principles of genetics 

 might, perhaps, be more successfully approached by be- 

 ginning with wild plants. For this reason he has been 

 bringing into the garden during the past several years a 

 considerable number of wild species which appeared to 

 offer desirable material for experimentation. 



His attention was first directed to Lupimis through the 

 difficulties that appeared to beset the systematist in arriv- 

 ing at a satisfactory classification of the species. It 

 seemed possible that the difficulty might be due to the fact 

 that the species are of recent origin and, so, very close to- 

 gether. Under the circumstances that a genus is either 

 now or has recently ])een in a mutable state it would 

 seem likely that natural selection would not yet have had 

 time to weed out all the forms doomed to perish through 

 lack of adaptation or insufficient vigor. 



While discussing this question one of his colleagues 

 mentioned the fact that the form recently (1911) de- 

 scribed under the name of Lupinus piper smithii Heller 

 (5) grows near and that it sometimes has pink flowers. 

 An investigation during the spring of 1914 not only con- 

 firmed this statement, but also showed that pink flowers 

 are not uncommon in two closely related species — L. val- 

 licola apriciis (Greene) (4) and L. uauu.s Dougl. (7). 

 These three species are all close to one another but ap- 

 parently satisfactorily separable by the systematist. 



