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The number of petals is often seen to vary only in one direction from what should be expected to be the mean condition. With buttercups and brambles and many others there is only an increase above the typical five; quaternate flowers are wanting or at least are very rare. With weigelias and many others the number of the tips of the corolla varies downwards, going from five to four and three.
I found some stray quaternate leaves of this plant some years ago, and tried to win from them, through culture and selection, a race that would be as rich in these anomalies as the red clover. But the utmost care and the most rigid selection, and all the attention I could afford, failed to produce any result.
I had the good fortune to find two plants of clover, bearing one quinate and several quaternate leaves, on an excursion in the neighborhood of Loosdrecht in Holland. After transplanting them into my garden, I cultivated them during three years and observed a slowly increasing number of anomalous leaves.
Every one knows the "four-leaved" clover. It is occasionally found on lawns, in pastures and by the roadsides. Specimens with five leaflets may be found now and then in the same place, or on the same plant, but these are rarer. I have often seen isolated plants with quaternate leaves, but only rarely have I observed individuals with more than one such leaf.
But when plants with two or more quaternate leaves on the same individual are chosen it indicates that it belongs to a definite race, which under suitable conditions may prove to become very rich in the anomalies in question. Obviously it is not always easy to decide definitely whether a given individual belongs to such a race or not. Many trials may be necessary to secure the special race.
I counted in the average 25 anomalous organs on each of them. From their seed I raised the third generation of my culture in the year 1891. This generation included some 300 plants, on which above 8,000 leaves were counted. More than 1,000 were quaternate or quinate, the ternate leaves being still in the majority.
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