68 



THE GARDENERS' MAGAZINE. 



January 27, 1912. 



"duplex/' or double, varieties, that is, 

 those with two standards, and in Margaret 

 Madison it would seem to have secured a 

 good bright blue Spencer form. 



Mr. Henry Eckford, Wem, has a short 

 list of new sweet peas, and the varieties 

 offered are Miss Guest, a bright reddish- 

 rose self of great beauty; Apricot, a 

 charming combination of soft apricot and 

 pink ; Terra Cotta, difficult to describe, 

 but combining cerise and rose shades in 

 pleasing fashion ; and an improved waved 

 form of the brilMaut St. George. 



Mr. C. W. Breadmore is distributing 

 Iris, a lovely salmon sweet pea, promised 

 sonu^ time past ; Jack Tar, deep blue, with 

 itroii/c-i iuted standard, is a good thing; 

 jiiid Si) is Alpha, a fine pink, shown well 

 at Temple Show of 1911. 



Messrs. Aldersey and Marsden Jones, 

 Tilston have soinr vn v choice varieties 



1 



of refined form, and these include Amber, 

 deep pink, vshading to scarlet; Dragonfly, 

 lavender and cre?.m ; George Cnrzon, deep 



1)1 lu^ fhi ke ; M ulberry, deep reddish- 

 ma rooii : and Tru** Blue, an indigo self that 

 [ do not remember having seen. 



Messrs. Stark and Son, Great Ryburgh, 

 have Hercules, which did so Avell last vear, 

 and White Queen, a white coiuiterpart of 

 the former. I am waiting for the Messrs. 

 Stark to give us a waved form of the solid 

 and pure White Florence Wright — it would 

 be fine. Majestic is offered as a new cream 

 form, and King Manoel mUvSt be classed 

 as cliocolate-red ; and Asliantee as dark 

 maroon ; while Bluejacket is very promis- 

 ing in tlie deep blue section. 



^lessrs Luniiev and Co., Havling, have 



Knid Damerum, 

 and aiiotlier <iark vsu ii^ty in tbeir Guy Lang- 

 ton, wliib' lliitli Karl is a dark wine-red 

 swei't pea tliat lias been exhibite<l 



a good cho(Mtl;iti^ self in 



A\ e 1 ! 

 \ 'i < i m 



on several <H-<asions. 

 Den] . Kol vcmIoii. oflVrs Bouquet, a 

 pink Hrlen PirrcH' ; M in nit' ( )rst . a pale 

 wa\tMl Helen Pie ice ; and .1 uliet , a very 



pretty variety, cream, flushed with sal- 

 mon. Mr. Janies Box, Lindfiehl, is distri- 

 buting Orange Bei't'eet i(ni . a rich variety 

 bo showed la rgely a iid w(dl at many ex- 

 liibitinns in 1911. ^Fessrs. Isaac House 

 and Son. AA'(\sthnrv, Bi istol. have a mauve 

 and i>urple variety named Messrs. James 

 C. House. Chastity, a fine blush form, 

 from Messrs. R. H. B^th. Wisbech, promises 

 well. Earl of Cliester. orange-scarlet, 

 offered by Mr. Ward, of Vicar's Cross, 

 Chester, and Messrs. Faulkner and 

 Aitkens. Tarvin, Chester, has been highly 

 spoken of bv many growers, but I do not 

 think 1 have seen it mvself. Mr. 

 Mackereth, Tlverston, is sending out Mr. 

 F. Chapman's lolanthe, a good white 

 garden variety. Messrs. Gil1>ert and Son, 

 Dyke, Bourne, have a good cream-pink in 

 Lady Flarenoe Willoughby, and a eharming 



l)Iue flaked variety in Mrs. B. Gilbert, and 

 Afr. A. iv Alsen, of Waterlooviile, has a dis- 

 tinct novelty in Minnie Furne'I, pink, witli 

 cream centre. Messrs. P'. W. King ami 

 Co.. CoggeshalU have a new ivory variety 

 f.anied Brineess Mary. Mr. W. O. Cant- 

 by, Bury St. Edmunds, is offering a new 

 pale blue named Seamew, and a lilac-blush 

 variety named Agnita ; the first-named is 

 very pretty, while Agnita is unusually 

 fragrant. 



There are other new varieties, some of 

 them offered by the raisers mentioned 

 above, and some bv other firms, but those 

 named are all worthy of trial. Probably 

 not fewer than a hundred and fifty new 

 sweet peas were exhil)ited in 1911, but 

 some of them appeared to be new onlv to 

 the exhibitor, and so had reeeived a new 

 name for the time being. It grows more 

 diffienlt each year to keep pace with the 

 Tiovelties. C. 



Mr. Wil- 



usual three to one series, certain conibina- 



THE SCIENTIFIC INTEREST tions being far more frequent than others. 



IN SWEET PEAS. 



We all know the story of the Cambridge 

 xindergraduate whose one strong point was 

 a simple problem in mechanics, and who, 

 when sitting for the Little-Go " began 

 an answer to a- question on Xenophon's 

 Anabasis: ^*That the Betreat of the Ten 

 Thousand may be clearly unde-rstood, I 

 must first explain the principle of the Com- 

 mon Pump." I mention this because I fear 

 your feelings will be mixed when I say that^ 

 in order to make clear the scientific interest 

 in sweet peas, I must first explain Mendel's 

 principles of heredity. 



Tlie main principle underlying MendePs 

 law is very simple^ and really A^ery interest- 

 ing, as all np-to-date sweet pea raisers 

 know, but the average man whose delight 

 is in his prize blossoms, when he sees pages 

 covered with symbols that look like algebra 

 sums gone mad^ is apt to shy at it and turn 

 over to the next article with its accom- 

 paniment of pictures. I shall not go far into- 

 the mysteries of Mendelism, but jiist give 

 the main principle. Mendel experimented 

 with culinary peas, and came to the con- 

 <-lusion that the characteristics of a plant 

 (height, colour, and so on) are due to pairs 

 of alternative factors^ respectively domi- 

 nant and recessive, the recessive charac- 

 teristic being latent except when the 

 dominant factor is absent. He also found 

 that when a pair of factors were brought 

 together by crossing, the seedlings in the 

 first generation showed dominant charac- 

 teristics only, but that in the second if 

 self-fertilised, the plants had issue in the 

 proportion of three dominants to one re- 

 <-essive. Of these the recessive and one 

 dominant bred true, while the other two 

 dominants always broke np again in the 

 same three to one ratio. ITiat is, as you 

 mav sav the bedrock of Mendel. 



The chief workers on sweet peas front a 

 purely scientific point of view are Mr. W. 

 Bateson, late Professor of Biology at Cam- 

 bridge and liis successor, Professor li. C. 

 Punnett. Jn one of their early experiments 

 tliey found to their surprise, on crossing 

 two white sweet peas, that the offspring 

 was coloured. This was due to the fact 

 that colour in a flower is not due to one, 

 but to two factors, called C. and R.^ t^nd 

 if either of these is absent^ the flower is 

 white. In this case each flower car^'led 

 one of the complementary factors, so uheir 

 union produced a coloured seedling in the 

 firsl: generation, while in the second, f-f 

 course, some of the seedlings were again 

 white. Consequently, when crossing a 

 coloured snveet pea with a white, we must 

 not imagine that colours can come in from 

 ou'^ parent only. This will be so if the 

 \\ hiteiies- is fine to the absence of the fac- 

 tor I?.. I)ut if ('. is ab-ent, aM soi'ts of tints 

 may ho suppiesM'd in the apparently pure 

 white. 



It was thus, I think, that Audrey Crier 

 got its beautiful salmon shade. Audrey 

 CriiM\ in stud book parlance, was by Coun- 

 tess Spencer out of Dorothy Eckford. 

 Dorothy Eckford is the albino form of Miss 

 Wilimott, the factor C. having apparently 

 droppcil out, leaving the orange tint latent, 

 to reappear in the offspring of the cross. 

 Of course, the coloin* question is not so 

 simple as this ; In the composition of any 

 tint it is probable that more than one, in 

 fact^ several, factors are concerned. 



Another very interesting phenomenon 

 witlt regard to sweet peas is what is known 



and repulsion." Where 

 two apparently quite ind(»peiulent factors 

 are concerned, we ssonietimes find them 

 occurring in a different ratio from the 



A further discovery was made last year 

 which may be of great practical value to 

 raisers. 



It is well known that old type sweet 

 peas seed much more freely than the waved 

 varieties. This would lead us to think that 

 there is some connection between shade 

 and fertility, that, for instance, a system 

 exists in which the factors for plain stan- 

 dards and fertility are coup^ed^ while the 

 factor for waviness repels the fertility fac- 

 tor. If this were so^ wavy sweet peas, with 

 a fertility equal to plain ones, would occur 

 with very great rarity, likewise sterile peas 

 with plain standards. Last year it was 

 discovered that if you cross these excep- 

 tional members of a coupling system, you 

 reverse the system in their progeny, so that 

 if in your seedlings of the second genera- 

 tion yoii find an extra sterile plain stan- 

 dard and an extra fertile wavy pea and 

 cross these two, you will obtain a race in 

 which the great majority of the waved 

 peas will be extra fertile and the plain 

 standards sterile. 



Another interesting' problem Mhich re- 

 mains to be solved is the cause of scalding 

 and burning. Why should Sunproof Crim- 

 son, for example, come unscathed through 

 the brightest sunshine, w^hile King Edward 

 Spencer, in the same circumstances, turns 

 a kind of dingy purple ? In this connection 

 I made some interesting observations last 

 year^ which lead nie to think that burning 

 is not the result of sunshine only. Every- 

 one reniembei's, with more or less grati- 

 tude^ according to his occupation, that last 

 July was exceptionally hot, dry, and 

 sunny. From the 6th to the 13th we had 

 cloutlless days here with a considerable 

 breeze from the N.E. and temperatures 

 from 75 to 85 degrees. On the 16th the 

 wind went round to S.W., there was a wod 

 deal of cloud, and temperature sranged 

 from 74 to 91 degrees, with a very close, 

 thundery atmosphere, and kept so till the 

 end of the month. Very light showers fell 

 on four days in the latter period, the for- 

 mer was rainless. During; the former 

 period King Edward Spencer, growing un- 

 shaded in the open field with a S.E. aspect, 

 showe<l absolutely no signs of burning, but 

 no sooner had the wind gone into a 

 southerly quarter and the air become close 

 and humid, than it burnt badlv, although 

 there was more cloud, and at first a rather 

 lower temperature. By the second morn- 

 ing, even the unopened buds were a dingy 

 purple. Does this justify one in suppos- 

 ing that the phenomenon we call " burn- 

 * is not really as much the effect of 



mg 



as ^* coupling 



sunburn as of the humidity in the air? 



We often hear that a variety is quite 

 fixed in one garden, and hopelessly sportive 

 in another. Is there any conntx'tion he- 

 tween soils and fixity? Two things I have 

 noticed with regard to m ild flowers make 

 me inclined to answer " Yes." In the first 

 place, in Ithis neighbourhood, cases of 

 aHunism se<Mn to occur with comparative 

 frequency in some districts, while in others 

 they are very scarce. In the second place^ 

 I noticed in the Lincolmshire fens, on the 

 border of the limestone district, that 

 several normally blue chalk-flowers wliich 

 had become naturalised by the side of the 

 fenland dykes, bore pink blossoms in that 

 situation. If there is anything in this 

 analogy, Ave might find a clue here to the 

 unexpected appearance of rogues in an ap- 

 parently fixed variety and by following it 

 up might arrive at an explanation of the 

 origin of that source of worry and joy to 

 raisers, namely, Sweet Pea Countess 

 Spencer. T. H. Dipnall. 



Shelley, Hadleigh. 



