No. 560] GENETIC AL STUDIES ON CENOTHERA 451 



in successive generations it produces a series of similar 

 "mutants." 



There has come to light during the past year a his- 

 torical matter of interest which bears very directly on 

 the problem of the origin of the Lamarckiana of De 

 Vries's cultures. This is the determination of Lamarck's 

 plant, CEnothera Lama rckiana Scringe (1828), grown in 

 Paris at about 1796 or somewhat earlier, as a form 

 of <E. grandiflora Solander (1789) = <E. grandiflora 

 "Aiton." The evidence for this determination (see 

 Davis, '12b) is very convincing and there can be, I think, 

 no doubt but that De Vries ('01, Vol. I, pp. 316, 317) was 

 mistaken when he identified the material of his cultures 

 with the type specimen of (E. Lamarckiana Seringe, the 

 sheet upon which Lamarck (?1798) based his descrip- 

 tion in the Encyclopedic Methodique Botanique. It 

 should be remembered that Professor De Vries made this 

 identification some years before the rediscovery of (E. 

 grandiflora at its original habitat in Alabama in 1904, 

 and consequently before there was available our present 

 information on this species. 



(Enothera Lamarckiana Seringe (1828) now becomes 

 a synonym of (E. grandiflora Solander, described in 

 Aiton 's "Hortus Kewensis" (1789), and the material of 

 De Vries's cultures can not bear the name Lamarckiana 

 with Seringe as an authority. I have suggested, how- 

 ever, in the paper cited above (Davis, '12b, p. 530) that 

 the plant of De Vries's cultures retain the name La- 

 marckiana to be written in the form (E. Lamarckiana 

 De Vries. A change of name for this plant would be 

 most unfortunate, since it would result in endless con- 

 fusion in the literature of experimental morphology. 

 The evidence indicates that (E. Lamarckiana De Vries 

 has come to us as the product of the garden through a 

 long history of cultivation and that its parentage is far 

 from pure; in short, that it is of hybrid origin. As a 

 garden plant we are seemingly justified in giving it the 

 name (E. Lamarckiana De Vries by Article 50 of the code 



