52 
Reginald R. Gates. 
a case, in which the stem thus produced reached a height of 
six or eight inches, bearing a crown of rosette leaves at the top and 
giving a striking semblance to a cycad. The leaf-characters showed 
this plant (No. 6 of the culture) to be closely similar to, though not 
identical with, the mutant O. lata. 
The plant (No. 25) figured in Plate III is probably of mixed 
ancestry, being partly from U. Lamarckiana and partly from O 
grandiflora forms, if one can judge from its physiological behaviour, 
which was intermediate between that of these two species. That 
is, it remained a rosette for fifteen months, producing a considerable 
area of stem covered with leaf-bases, but finally, in October, 1908, 
formed a stalk with internodes and bore flowers. From pure seeds 
of this plant I have obtained a uniform race which breeds true in 
later generations. Its characters will be described in detail elsewhere. 
Its chief peculiarity is the very narrow leaves, while its hud characters 
are nearest O. rubrinervis} This race maintains its intermediate 
behaviour between 0. Lamarckiana and 0. grandiflora as regards 
flowering and rosette formation under ordinary conditions of culture. 
As is well known, the species of CEnothera which are ordinarily 
biennial can be grown as annuals by sowing the seeds in a greenhouse 
in winter and later transplanting out-of-doors. Under these conditions 
such species as O. Lamarckiana , 0. biennis and their derivatives, 
produce a large rosette of many leaves before they finally send up 
a flowering shoot. When O. grandiflora is treated in this way, 
however, it frequently omits entirely the rosette stage, and produces 
a vertical shoot at once, or with only a few preliminary leaves 
corresponding to a rosette. The race (No. 25) referred to above 
possesses the same characteristic in a less marked degree, a certain 
number of the individuals omitting the rosette stage in each 
generation. The tendency to omit the rosette portion of the 
ontogeny under ordinary conditions of culture may thus be said to 
be partially inherited by this race. 
A plant (No. 5) very similar to No. 6 in the tropical culture 
described above, produced finally a slender, fasciated and irregularly 
branched stem with flowers from which seeds were obtained. The 
resulting offspring, which were grown under ordinary cultural 
conditions, were a very heterogeneous lot, owing to the mixed 
ancestry of the parent plant, but none of them showed any inherited 
1 See Gates. “ Studies on the variability and heritability of 
pigmentation in CEnothera.” Zeitschr. f. Abst.- u. Verer- 
bungslehre, Vol. 4, p. 350, 1911. 
