AMERICAN 
JOURNAL OF BOTANY 
Vol. VI December, 1919 No. 10 
INFLUENCE OF SUGARS ON THE GROWTH OF ALBINO PLANTS 
L. Knudson and E. W. Lindstrom 
In the course of investigations on the influence of carbohydrates on 
plants by the senior writer (i), the occurrence of albino seedlings of timothy 
was occasionally "noted when germinating the seed. The question then 
arose, What would be the influence of carbohydrates on these plants? Can 
an albino plant exist and develop when it is entirely dependent on organic 
material derived externally, as is the case with species of Monotropa and 
with other non-chlorophyllous plants? 
It is true that experiments have been made in which corn and other 
plants have been grown in the dark with sugars or other organic substances 
supplied, and that under these conditions plants have maintained them- 
selves for some time and have shown an increase over the original dry 
weight. The abnormality of the growth in the dark, however, is such, and 
the augmentation in weight is so slight, that one cannot draw conclusions 
as to the ability of phanerogamic plants to maintain themselves when the 
process of photosynthesis is not active. 
There is only one way of determining whether or not a phanerogamic 
plant can develop at the expense of organic matter derived externally, and 
that is to use albino plants. It might be suggested that one might grow 
green plants in the entire absence of atmospheric carbon dioxide, but this 
would not prevent entirely the process of photosynthesis, since the carbon 
dioxide produced in respiration and retained within the plant would be 
re-utilized in photo^nthesis. 
The experiments with albino corn were made possible by the inheritance 
studies with corn by the junior writer (3), who obtained during his investiga- 
tions a hybrid that produced albino corn plants in a simple mendelian ratio. 
The albino seedlings used were all from self-pollinated ears of green plants. 
The green plants were heterozygous only for the factor that determines the 
production of white seedlings. No other visible abnormalities were present 
in this stock. Such stock had been tested against other albinistic seedlings 
and had always remained free from any tendency to develop plastids and 
chlorophyll such as other albino seedlings are known to do. In other 
words, the albino progeny (approximately 25 percent of the total) from the 
[The Journal for November (6: 357-400) was issued Dec. 18, 1919.] 
401 
