THE 



AMERICAN NATURALIST 



Vol. lilll. January, 1919 No. 624 



THE INHEKITANCE OF HULL-LESSNESS IN 

 OAT HYBEIDS^ 



PROFESSOR H. H. LOVE and G. P. McROSTIE 

 (In Cooperation with the Office op Cereal Investigations, U. S. 



The purpose of this paper is to set forth some results 

 obtained in certain crosses between the hull-less types of 

 oats and some of the hulled forms. 



The hull-less types belong to the species Avena nuda. 

 The origin of these forms is not definitely knowTi, al- 

 though, according to Carleton,^ they appear to have 

 come from central and eastern Asia. Reports are to the 

 effect that a certain form of this oat has been cultivated 

 in China for a thousand years or longer. These types 

 are not generally cultivated in any other countries and 

 perhaps due to this fact little study has been made of the 

 various hull-less types and their possible origin. From 

 some observations made on our material it seems quite 

 possible that these hull-less forms may have originated 

 through mutative changes. For example, in a pure line 

 of the variety Sixty Day certain spikelets suddenly ap- 

 peared which were very similar to the true hull-less 

 forms in having the caryopsis loosely held in the glumes 

 and an increased number of flowers per spikelet. These 

 seeds wore tested, but did not reproduce tliis hull-less 

 tendency. A large number of similar cases have been ob- 

 served particularly with hybrids, although none of these 



1 Paper No. 68, Department of Plant Breeding, Cornell University, Ithaca, 



