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Updated: June 21, 2025
These two plants grew on the same spot, and were allowed to fertilize each other by the agency of the bees, but were kept isolated from any other congener. They flowered abundantly, but produced only one-spurred bilabiate flowers during the whole summer. They matured more than 10 cu. cm. of seeds. It is from this pair of plants that my peloric race has sprung.
The peloric form in this case appeared at once, but was not isolated, and was left free to visiting insects, which of course crossed it with the surrounding varieties.
The ground for this choice lies simply in the fact that the peloric toad-flax is known to have originated from the ordinary type at different times and in different countries, under more or less divergent conditions. It had arisen from time to time, and hence I presumed that there was a chance to see it arise again.
Hence the suggestion is forced upon us that perhaps, owing to some unknown cause, all the peloric individuals of my experiment belonged to one and the same type, and were sterile for this reason only. If this is true, then it is to be presumed that all previous investigators have met the same condition, each having at hand only one of the two required types.
We will limit ourselves to the probable origin of peloric variations at large, of which little is known, but some evidence may be derived from the recorded facts. Only one case can be said to be directly analogous to our observations. This refers to the peloric race of the common snapdragon, or Antirrhinum majus of our gardens.
They all, at least nearly all, some twenty specimens, flowered in the following month. I observed only one peloric flower among the large number present. I took the plant bearing this flower and one more for the culture of the following year, and destroyed all others.
Here we have the first experimental mutation of a normal into a peloric race. Two facts were clear and simple. The ancestry was known for over a period of four generations, living under the ordinary care and conditions of an experimental garden, isolated from other toad-flaxes, but freely fertilized by bees or at times by myself.
Others are of later origin, and among these one or two varieties have been accidentally produced in the nursery of Mr. Chr. Lorenz in Erfurt, and are now for sale, the seeds being guaranteed to yield a large proportion of peloric individuals.
The peloric fox-glove shows the highest degree of metamorphy in the terminal flowers of the stem itself, the weaker branches having but little tendency towards the formation of the anomaly.
It seemed possible to compare the numerical proportion of the mutated seeds with those of normal plants. In order to ascertain this proportion I sowed the greatest part of my 10 cu. cm. of seed and planted some 2,000 young plants in little pots with well-manured soil. I got some 1,750 flowering plants and observed among them 16 wholly peloric individuals.
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