THE AMERICAN BOTANIST 



33 



in Nebraska. I have never had the pleasure of testing the seed 

 to see if they would come true. I doubt very much if they 

 would, for I think albinos would be much more abundant if 

 they did. The editor's explanation fails to explain when you 

 find one albino in the midst of twenty plants closely packed in 

 a group with their roots necessarily interlacing. — /. M. Bates, 

 Red Cloud, Nehr. [Mr. Bates probably overiooked the seeds- 

 man's offerings in concluding that albinos do not come true 

 from seeds. To take only a few common instances, there are 

 white forms of campanulas, lupines, sweet peas, phloxes, 

 peonies, Physostegias, PoJeinoniuuis, morning glories and a 

 host of others and all these come true from seed. Albinos may 

 occur in any flower whose color is due to colored cell sap. If 

 the color is due to color corpuscles in the cells they are, as Mr. 

 Bates notes, rarely if ever white. There are human albinos as 

 well as albinos in other animals and plants and in breeding this 

 character behaves according to Mendel's Law, which circum- 

 stance inclines one to think that albinos contain a special factor 

 which produces albinism. Whether albinos are due to the loss 

 of a factor or the development of a new one may still be ques- 

 tioned ; either would account for albinos in a patch of flowers of 

 the normal color. The reason that albinos are not more 

 abundant is doubtless that they are abnormal and therefore 

 always liable tO' be smothered out by the more vigorous normal 

 plants. — Ed.] 



Vegetables as Flowers. — The idea that vegetables are 

 only good to eat is so fixed in the minds of most of us that we 

 are apt to overlook the pleasure that certain of these utilitarian 

 plants, if permitted to grow to full maturity, are capable of 

 yielding as things of pure beauty. Lettuce, turnips and carrots, 

 for instance, take on a new dignity, when seen crowned with 

 their flowers, and the salsify plant produces not only a blossom 

 of exquisite beauty, but a seed head of fairy-like delicacy of 

 structure. It is worth while sowing a sunny border of the 



