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THE AMERICAN NATURALIST [Vol. XLIX 



Of the above Bed is coronatus, and Langley Gem is 

 vinosus, both derived from our Boulder cultures. The 

 seed offered as Langley Gem was grown in Boulder. The 

 Primrose variety I have called prinndinus. 



An old cultivated variety is H. annuus var. indicus 

 (HeliantJnis indicus Linn., Mant. I, 117), peculiar for the 

 foliar expansion of the involucral bracts. It did not come 

 from India, but from Egypt. Tithonia speciosa, once 

 regarded by Hooker as a Helianthus, has the bracts nor- 

 mally foliaceous. In 1913 I witnessed the appearance of 

 foliaceous bracts in the F 2 generation from primulinus X 

 coronatus. The plant in question was a very abnormal 

 dwarf, wholly unlike the rest of its generation, or any 

 known parents. It was described as follows : 



Dwarf, about 28 mm. high ; slender, f asciated at top of 

 stem; rays vinous, but on nearly all the heads a very 

 dilute and dingy color ; disc dark, stigmatic branches dark 

 red; apical part of disc corollas dark greenish, tipped 

 with red, and very hairy; anthers not projecting, but not 

 shrivelled, almost wholly without pollen, and what there 

 is probably no good; achenes hairy, usually with super- 

 numerary pappus scales; pappus scales stained with pink; 

 involucral bracts long and tapering, strongly hirsute, 

 curled over, one or two outer ones long and foliaceous; 

 stem hirsute; leaves long and narrow, narrowly cuneate 

 at base; margins irregularly, sharply dentate, entire on 

 small very narrow leaves; sometimes one of the large 

 lateral veins of the leaves, and its supporting tissue, 

 absent. 



Such a plant may result from some unwonted combina- 

 tion of genes, whereby the normal constitution is broken 

 down and in the resulting disruption characters usually 

 suppressed appear. Such monstrosities quickly perish, 

 but during their transient existence may reveal, like a 

 .1 run ken man, matters which in the well behaved would 

 never reach the surface. 



One of the most remarkable of cultivated varieties is 

 the Chrysanthemum-flowered, of which we obtained a 



