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The other plants were wholly destroyed. Such annihilation must include both the stems and roots and the latter of course requires considerable labor. The following year, however, gave proof of the success of the operation, since my plant bloomed luxuriously for the second time and remained true to the type of the first year, producing peloric flowers exclusively.
But no such proof has been found, and the conclusion seems admissible that the mutation of toad-flaxes ordinarily, if not universally, takes place by a sudden step. Our experiment may simply be considered as a thoroughly controlled instance of an often recurring phenomenon. It teaches us how, in the main, the peloric mutations must be assumed to proceed. This conception may still be broadened.
Such facts clearly point to a common origin, and as only the terminal flowers are affected by the malformation, the fertility of the whole plant is evidently not seriously infringed upon. Before leaving the labiates, we may cite a curious instance of pelorism in the toad-flax, which is quite different from the ordinary peloric variety.
But if it were possible to combine the products of two mutations obtained in different countries and under different conditions, there would be a chance that they might belong to the supposed opposite types, and thus be fertile with one another. My peloric plants are still available, and the occurrence of this form elsewhere would give material for a successful experiment.
Orchids include a large number of peloric monstrosities and moreover a wild pelory which is systematically described not only as a separate species but even as a new genus. It bears the name of Uropedium lindenii, and is so closely related to Cypripedium caudatum that many authors take it for the peloric variety of this plant.
I may add, as an instance of this fact, and as a striking case of correlation, that in many pelargoniums the two upper petals in the central flower of the truss often lose their patches of darker colour; and when this occurs, the adherent nectary is quite aborted, the central flower thus becoming peloric or regular.
The probability thereof is enhanced by the experience that my peloric plants bear large capsules and a rich harvest of seeds when fertilized from plants of the normal one-spurred race, while they remain nearly wholly barren by artificial fertilization with others.
It should also be remembered that peloric flowers are known to have originated in quite a number of different species of Linaria, and also with many of the allied species within the range of the Labiatiflorae. I will now give the description of my own experiment. Of course this did not give the expected result in the first year.
I tried both self-fertilization and cross-pollination, and only with utmost care did I succeed in saving barely a hundred seeds. In order to obtain them I was compelled to operate on more than a thousand flowers on about a dozen peloric plants.
Without doubt the existence of two color-varieties of the peloric type, one of a very dark red, indicating the "Black prince" variety as the pollen-parent, and the other with a white tube of the corolla, recalling the form known as "Delila," is due to these crossings.
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