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When dealing with mutations of celandine we shall see that the laciniated form originated from the common celandine in a garden at Heidelberg about the year 1590. Among my Oenotheras one of the eldest of the recent productions is the O. brevistylis or short styled species which was seen for the first time in the year 1889.
This is known to occur with a variety of brambles, and is often seen in botanic gardens in one of the oldest and most interesting of all anomalies, the laciniated variety of the greater celandine or Chelidonium majus. Many other instances could be given. Most of them belong to the group of negative variations, as we have defined them.
It is afforded by some plants the leaves of which, instead of being entire or only divided into large parts, are cleft to a greater extent by repeated fissures of the marginal lobes. Such foliar variations are often seen in gardens, where they are cultivated for their beauty or singularity, as the laciniated alders, fern-leaved, beeches and limes, oakleaved laburnums, etc.
But in this case it is rather probable that the presumed normal parents were in reality hybrids between the type and the laciniated form, and simply split according to Mendel's law. This hypothesis is partly founded on general considerations and partly on experiments made by myself with the cut-leaved celandine, previously alluded to, which I crossed with the type.
Seeds of the laciniated beech gave only 10% of laciniated plants in experiments made by Strasburger; seeds of the monophyllous acacia, Robinia Pseud-Acacia monophylla, were found to be true in only 30% of the seedlings. Varieties have to be freed by selection from all such impurities, since isolation is a means which is quite impracticable under ordinary circumstances.
Every plot shows anomalous individuals, red or white flowers among a field of blue, normal among laciniated, single among double and so on. The most curious instance is afforded by dwarf varieties, where in the midst of hundreds and thousands of small individuals of the same height, some specimens show twice their size. So for instance, among the dwarfs of the larkspur, Delphinium Ajacis.
Seeds of trees often contain large quantities of impurities, and the laciniated varieties of birch, elder and walnut have often been observed to come true only in a small number of seedlings. In the case of new or young varieties, seed merchants often warn their customers as to the probable degree of purity of the seeds offered, in order to avoid complaints.
The opium-poppy affords a good instance. It "varies" in height, in color of foliage and flowers; the last are often double or laciniated; it may have white or bluish seeds, the capsules may open themselves or remain closed and so on. But every single variety is absolutely constant, and never runs into another, when the flowers are artificially pollinated and the visits of insects excluded.
As it flows it takes the forms of sappy leaves or vines, making heaps of pulpy sprays a foot or more in depth, and resembling, as you look down on them, the laciniated, lobed, and imbricated thalluses of some lichens; or you are reminded of coral, of leopard's paws or birds' feet, of brains or lungs or bowels, and excrements of all kinds.
Laciniated maples are said to be of relatively frequent occurrence in nurseries, among seedlings of the typical species. Loudon says that once 100 laciniated seedlings were seen to originate from seed of some normal trees.
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