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Fasciated hawkweeds and twisted teasels gave the same average constitution of the offspring from highly monstrous, and from apparently wholly normal individuals. In other words the fullest development of the visible characteristic was not in the slightest degree an indication of better hereditary tendencies.
Charlemagne gives his stewards several instructions about the women attached to his manses, and we may be sure that the monks of St Germain did the same on their model estates. 'For our women's work, says Charlemagne, 'they are to give at the proper time the materials, that is linen, wool, woad, vermilion, madder, wool combs, teasels, soap, grease, vessels, and other objects which are necessary.
Stems of this and of allied species are often met with and have been described by several writers, but they were always considered as accidents and nobody had ever tried to cultivate them. In the summer of 1885 I saw among a lot of normal wild teasels, two nicely twisted stems in the botanical garden of Amsterdam.
Obviously every gardener would select the seeds of the brightest crests, but with care the full crests may be recovered, even from the worst reversionists in two or three generations. It is a double race of quite the same constitution as the twisted teasels. My second point is a direct proof of this assertion, but made with a fasciated variety of a wild species.
More than once I have had occasion to deal with the phenomenon of torsions, as exhibited by the teasels and some other plants. This anomaly has been shown to be analogous to the cases described as double adaptations. The capacity of evolving antagonistic characters is prominent in both. The antagonists are assumed to lie quietly together while inactive.
Where they have been suffered to stand, along fences, by roadsides, and in forgotten corners, redroot, pigweed, ragweed, vervain, goldenrod, burdock, elecampane, thistles, teasels, nettles, asters, etc., how they lift themselves up as if not afraid to be seen now! They are all outlaws; every man's hand is against them; yet how surely they hold their own!
The twisted teasels lose their decussation, but in doing so the leaves are not left in a disorderly dispersion, but a distinct new arrangement takes its place, which is to be assumed as the normal one for the ancestors of the teasel family. The case is to be considered as one of atavism.
If the leaves are sessile, the analogy with the teasels is complete, as shown, for instance, in a case of Cotyledon, a crassulaceous plant which is known to produce such cups from time to time. They are narrower than those of the teasel, but this depends, as we have seen for the "one-leaved" ascidium, on the shape of the original leaf.
As stray anomalies they have often been observed, and I myself had the opportunity of collecting them on magnolia, on clover and on some other species. They are additional evidence in support of the explanation given above. The leaves on the stems of the teasels are disposed in pairs, and the bases of the two leaves of each pair are connate so as to constitute large cups.
Little stubby brier shoots, and clumps of russet bracken, and dead heather, ruffling like a brown dog's back, broke the dull surface of withered herbage, thistle stumps, teasels, rugged banks, and naked brush.
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