The first discovery of this locality was made in 1886. Afterwards I
visited it many times, often weekly or even daily during the first few
years, and always at least once a year up to the present time. This
stately plant showed the long-sought peculiarity of producing a number
of new species every year. Some of them were observed directly on the
field, either as stems or as rosettes. The latter could be transplanted
into my garden for further observation, and the stems yielded seeds to
be sown under like control. Others were too weak to live a sufficiently
long time in the field. They were discovered by sowing seed from
indifferent plants [526] of the wild locality in the garden. A third and
last method of getting still more new species from the original strain,
was the repetition of the sowing process, by saving and sowing the seed
which ripened on the introduced plants. These various methods have led
to the discovery of over a dozen new types, never previously observed or
described.
Leaving the physiologic side of the relations of these new forms for the
next lecture, it would be profitable to give a short description of the
several novelties. To this end they may be combined under five different
heads, according to their systematic value. The first head includes
those which are evidently to be considered as varieties, in the narrower
sense of the word, as previously given. The second and third heads
indicate the real progressive elementary species, first those which are
as strong as the parent-species, and secondly a group of weaker types,
apparently not destined to be successful. Under the fourth head I shall
include some inconstant forms, and under the last head those that are
organically incomplete.
Of varieties with a negative attribute, or real retrograde varieties, I
have found three, all of them in a flowering condition in the field. I
have given them the names of _laevifolia_, _brevistylis_ and _nanella_.
[527] The _laevifolia_, or smooth-leaved variety, was one of the very
first deviating types found in the original field. This was in the
summer of 1887, seventeen years ago. It formed a little group of plants
growing at some distance from the main body, in the same field. I found
some rosettes and some flowering stems and sowed some seed in the fall.
The variety has been quite constant in the field, neither increasing in
number of individual plants nor changing its place, though now closely
surrounded by other _Lamarckiana_s. In my garden it has proved to be
constant from seed, never reverting to the original _lamarckiana_,
provided intercrossing was excluded.
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