CRUCIATE-FLOWERED OENOTHERAS OF SUBGENUS ONAGRA 233 
During the past summer the writer grew fifty plants of an undeter- 
mined Oenothera from Springfield, Missouri, the seeds of which were 
collected from one individual by Mr. P. C. Standley. All were strictly 
uniform except for one plant, of which a single branch bore cruciate 
instead of broad-petaled flowers. The petals of the cruciate flowers 
would be characterized as narrowly oblong rather than linear, thus 
contrasting strongly with those of the cruciate variety of Oe. biennis, 
for instance, but nevertheless strikingly divergent from the petals of 
normal flowers. Doctor Shull suggests in a recent letter that his 
experience would lead him to suspect that the occurrence of such a 
bud variation indicated recent hybridization with a cruciate strain. 
In this connection de Vries's experience with Oe. cruciata var. varia is of 
interest. He found that this variety, in which the petals are incon- 
stant in form, segregated roughly into three groups, a purely cruciate- 
flowered, an intermediate and an atavistic (broad-petaled) group. 
Except for rare cases of bud variations which showed a return to the 
cruciate type, the progeny of the broad-petaled group were constant. 
Although it is by no means impossible that the broad-petaled Spring- 
field strain is a segregate from a hybrid between a broad petaled and 
a cruciate strain, the likelihood of such an origin is not great. Thus 
far no cruciate-flowered Oenothera is known from Missouri, and none 
has been collected nearer than Mobile, Alabama, or Washington, D. C. 
Although the cruciate bud variation of the Springfield strain has not 
yet been tested for constancy in a second generation, it seems to be 
of sufficient interest to justify calling attention to it in connection 
with a discussion of the origin and relationships of the cruciate types. 
Davis^i has recently published an adverse criticism of a paper by 
Stomps^^ on mutation in the Dutch Oe. biennis, which is based entirely 
upon a misconception of the relationships of the cruciate Oenothera of 
the sand dunes of Holland. It was perhaps unfortunate that de Vries 
named this plant Oe. biennis var. cruciata, in view of the fact that the 
same name had been formerly used by Torrey and Gray for Oe. cruciata 
Nutt., and may even again be taken up as the valid name for the older 
type if ideas as to the limits of species continue to shift. Davis made 
the error of regarding de Vries's homonym as a synonym of Oe. cruciata 
"Davis, B. M. Mutations in Oenothera biennis L.? Am. Nat. 47: 116-120, 
1913- 
^2 Stomps, T. J. Mutation bei Oenothera biennis L. Biol. Centralb. 32: 521. 
1912. 
