GREGOR MENDEL (1822-1884) 
ALTHOUGH the fact of heredity has been known for two thousand years or more, 
the laws have only recently been discovered. These we owe to the Austrian monk, 
Gregor Mendel, who experimented with common sPeyT peas and published an 
account of his work in 1865, at which time he made the statement that what we 
know today as the law of segregation and the law of re-assortment. 
His momentous discovery was almost wholly neglected by his own generation — 
and only brought to the attention of the world in general in 1900 when his paper was 
unearthed by three European botanists (deVries, Correm and Tschermak) who were 
also attempting to discover the laws of heredity. This is very important: the laws 
formulated by Mendel are absolute. They have never been proved incorrect. In 
sim ae words, a self-fertilized dahlia seed produces an F? or second filial generation 
seedling. 
I also suceeded in producing self-fertilized seed from many varieties of Carl 
Salbach’s patented gladioli. These glad seed I will offer for sale next year. 
Under Mendel’s Law twenty-five percent of self-fertilized dahlia seedings will 
be recessives, probably easily recognizable as wild species; twenty-five percent will 
be greatly improved new varieties, and fifty percent can be classed as normal, many 
of which ein appeal to growers as worth introducing. 
COMMENTS 
ABOUT JULY FIRST my seedlings began to bloom. The results can only be described 
as a scientific miracle. 
The first to bloom was a seedling of the small cactus miniature Ste. Therese, a 
Holland dahlia described as rose colored with a creamy center. I had two seedlings of 
Ste. Therese; one produced a fiery scarlet, formal decorative seven inches in diameter, 
the other seedling was worthless. 
Then the fireworks started. I had two hundred seedlings from twenty-seven 
varieties of dahlias. About one hundred and twenty of the seedlings were of a small 
pink ball dahlia named Pink Queen; about thirty-five were easily recognizable as wild 
species. Miss Alice Eastwood, Botanist of the California Academy of Sciences, Golden 
Gate Park, San Francisco, advised me the Index Kewensis recognizes twenty-six 
dahlia species; this probably includes dahlia Juarezii, the first cactus dahlia, grown in 
Holland in 1872 by a dahlia breeder named Venderberg, the dahlia itself having 
been received from an unknown friend in Mexico. 
