Many others have worked on various types of vegetables and flowers, with W. Atlee 
Burpee & Co. pioneering the work on their famous Fordhook breeding farms. As a result, 
we now have inbred hybrid tomatoes, sweet corn, eggplant cucumbers, zinnias and sweet- 
peas that have no competitors among the older varieties. 
I conceived the idea in 1942 that inbred hybrids could be produced in gladiolus and all 
other vegetatively propagated plants as well. That year, I started inbreeding, with Piil- 
zer's Blue Beauty. Good blues, then and still, were scarce. I knew that the Pfitzer family 
in Germany had linebred scientifically for half a century. Thus, I presumed Blue Beauty 
had a purer and healthier background than most of the blues. Blooming of the resulting 
inbreds brought out the interesting fact that apparently 90 per cent of the blood of Blue 
Beauty is purple. However, I did get a few blue inbreds with health in both bulbs and 
foliage. 
Inbreeding, I should explain, is done by placing pollen of a flower on the stigma of the 
same flower, thus crossing it with itself. A detailed explanation of the results would be 
too long for the space available. Generally speaking, however, it results in sorting out the 
characteristics of all the ancestors of the particular flower, in accordance with Mendel’s 
laws of segregation and resegregation. This sorting permits the discarding of inbreds which 
exhibit the weaknesses of the ancestors and intensifying the good qualities in other inbreds 
so their hereditary value is far superior to the original flower. 
Crossing of two of the Blue Beauty inbreds (BB1] x BB7) resulted in the inbred hybrid 
(Fl cross) Blue Blood, which has a mammoth slate blue bloom and the healthiest, largest, 
most vigorous foliage of any glad I have ever seen. This, I introduced in 1951. 
While the magic of inbreeding is shown best by crossing two inbreds to gain the vigor 
which results from combining them, several of my inbreds have shown themselves to be 
superior to the parents themselves and I’m anxiously awaiting results when bloom is pro- 
duced from crossing them. Driven Snow (I) is an example. An inbred of the old familia: 
Queen of Bremen, which I selected because of its healthiness and fast propagation as well 
as the beautiful color, the inbred came a pure white, with beautiful ruffling. In addition to 
the other fine traits, it makes the tallest plant with the longest flowerhead I have ever seen 
in the 200 size, which was far from true of the parent. 
The inbreds offered for sale here may be crossed with each other or with other inbreds 
or with a standard variety to produce what is known in geneticist’s language as a top 
cross. In any of these procedures, you will be assured of far more uniform and superior 
results than with any cross using standard varieties. 
Inbred hybrids have proven themselves far superior in other plant breeding fields. 
You may be confident that they will in gladiolus too. Not only that, the technique is adapt- 
able to any vegetatively-propagated plant also, such as lilies, dahlias, fruit and other trees 
and shrubs, potatoes, etc. It undoubtedly will revolutionize these fields, too, as soon as 
plant breeders get around to them. The cross breeds true from bulbs. So, the cross does 
not have to be repeated annually as in corn and other seed-bearing plants. 
For the coming GLAD REVOLUTION, get inbreds to do your hybridizing with. 
