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But no effort has yet been made to separate thoroughly the pistilloid half-races from the corresponding ever-sporting varieties. Some plants are recorded as being more liable to this peculiarity than others. Stamens are sometimes replaced by open carpels with naked ovules arising from their edges and even from their whole inner surfaces.
Among all the previously described cases of horticultural plants and monstrosities there is no clearer case of an ever-sporting variety than this one of the water-persicaria. The var. terrestris sports into the var. natans, and as often as the changing life conditions may require it. It is-true that ordinary sports occur without our discerning the cause and without any relation to adaptation.
These last we have shown to be double races. Their peculiar and wide range of variability is due to the substitution of two characters, which exclude one another, or if combined, are diminished in various degrees. Striped flowers and stocks, "five-leaved" clover, pistilloid opium-poppies and numerous other monstrosities have been dealt with as instances of such ever-sporting varieties.
Ever-sporting varieties on the contrary are far less obvious, and in many cases their hereditary relations have had to be studied anew. A clear analogy between them and corresponding types of wild plants has yet to be pointed out. There can be no doubt that such analogy exists; the conception that they should be limited to cultivated plants is not probable.
It embraces most of the so-called variable types in horticulture, and besides these a wide range of anomalies. Every ever-sporting variety has at least two different types, around and between which it varies in numerous grades, but to which it is absolutely limited. Variegated leaves fluctuate between green and white, or green and yellow, and display these colors in nearly all possible patterns.
In order to attain a better solution of the problem we must take a broader view of the facts. The wide range of variability of ever-sporting varieties is due to the presence of two antagonistic characters which cannot be evolved at the same time and in the same organ, because they exclude one another. Whenever one is active, the other must be latent.
The first is only half-way a variety, and therefore would deserve the name of a half-race; the second is not yet a full constant variety, but always fluctuates to and fro between the varietal and the specific mark, ever-sporting in both directions. It holds a middle position between a half-race and a variety, and therefore might be called a "middle-race."
Afterwards it proved true from seed, but was very variable, exhibiting rather the features of an ever-sporting variety. Another novelty was seen the first time in several individuals. It was a pink sport of the European cranesbill, Geranium pratense. It arose quite unexpectedly in the summer of 1902 from a striped variety of the blue species.
Before leaving the striped varieties, attention is called to an interesting deduction, which probably gives an explanation of one of the most widely known instances of ever-sporting garden plants. Striped races always include two types. Both of them are fertile, and each of them reproduces in its offspring both its own and the alternate type.
But the term ever-sporting variety seems more adequate to convey a right idea of the nature of this curious type of inheritance. From this discussion it will be seen that the behavior of the crimson clover is not to be considered as an exception, but as a widely occurring type of phenomenon, occurring perhaps in all sorts of teratologic deviations, and in wide ranges of species and genera.
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