Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 66.djvu/224

220 flower but no seeds. Crossing the small hardy white calla with a yellow one which is not hardy, develops, with selection, a hardy yellow calla.

A crinum from Florida is hardy but not handsome. Crossing this with a handsome crinum from Mexico, the plants were selected for those which should be both hardy and handsome. The desired qualities of the two species have been combined and other valuable new qualities incidentally developed as regeneration and selection proceeded.

In hybridizing callas, the yellow ones with the white, to form a hardy yellow race, some of the resultant plants have pale flowers, some light yellow, and those chosen are made deep yellow by selection from second and later generations. Both parent plants in this case have leaves blotched with white, and this is found in all the descendants.

Hybridizing the wild flower, Erysimum arkansanum, which is yellow, with a native wild white species, resulted in the first generation a perfect blend of yellow and white; with a second generation the species separate completely, about five per cent, of those examined being yellow, the other ninety-five per cent, white; white dominant. With a hybrid Thalictrum, seed pods are developed more abundantly than with either parent, but the seeds are not viable.

We may expect variations in form, size, color, quality, fragrance, vigor or any other characteristic. To get variation in any one direction is to open the door to anything else. Hybridizing the Japanese quince with the common quince, we have large-leaved seedlings which look quite different from the parent (common quince). The final result is a seedling looking like the Japanese quince, without the power of continued growth (too wide a cross to blend permanently or profitably).

Some of the black raspberries when hybridized with some of the blackberries usually die when the time comes to bear fruit. Many hybrids perish under the stress of reproduction. The Amaryllis vittata is now eight to eleven inches across, being nearly four times as broad as before the work of selection for size was begun, and with vigor and freedom of growth and bloom amazingly increased. On a strip of poor land it grows very small, with narrow leaves and slender flowers, but on the same poor land some of the hybrid variants grow very large and pay no attention to the soil. A variant of Ampelopsis quinquefolia has very large leaves, highly colored in the fall, but no fruit. Mimulus tigrinus of Europe has very many variations. Its flowers are yellow, with patches of orange and other colors. When crossed with some oij our native species, the seedlings are greatly improved in all respects, even in blooming, yet rarely produce seeds.

It is generally much easier to develop variations in seedlings from variegated flowers than from those of solid color (the variegation shows a lack of complete amalgamation). A double mimulus is formed of the hose-en-hose sort. One hybrid poppy produces an abortive flower