CHAPTER XVIII.

ON THE IMPROVEMENT OF RACES.

WHAT has been stated in the preceding chapter, concerning the preservation of the races of domesticated plants, is in some measure applicable to their improvement; because the very means employed to preserve those peculiarities of habit, which render them valuable, will, from time to time, be the cause of still more valuable qualities making their appearance. There are, however, other points of great importance on which the gardener has dependence.

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Sudden alterations in the quality of seedling plants often occur from no apparent cause, just as those accidental changes, called sports," in the colour or form of the leaves, flowers, or fruit, of one single branch of a tree, occasionally break out, we know not why. Of these things, physiology can give no account; but it is certain that, when such sports appear, they indicate a violent constitutional change in the action of the limb thus affected, which change may be sometimes perpetuated by seed, and always by propagation of the limb itself where propagation is practicable. It is possible that even new forms of shrubs might be procured by keeping these facts in view, and that climbers might be deprived of their climbing habits, for it is known that the handsome evergreen bush called the Tree Ivy, which grows erect, with scarcely the least tendency to climb, has been procured by propagating the fruit-bearing branches of trees of considerable age.

A sport is a mutatio per saltum, or, a sudden change of one thing into another, different in some very striking respect, as

482

SPORTS ARE OR MAY BECOME PERMANENT.

when a Peach-tree produces a smooth fruit (a Nectarine) among its own downy brood. These sudden changes seem to be essentially different in their nature from the gradual alterations which cultivation brings about in all plants; they are violent transformations produced by unknown causes, and in which there is a natural tendency to preserve the altered condition. Some examples and their known results will make this plainer.

The annual Clarkia pulchella bears naturally a purple flower. Unexpectedly, among other seedlings, a plant appeared in which the flowers were pure white-a vegetable Albino. That was a sport. The seed was saved and sown; the produce consisted of many purple and many white-flowering individuals. The purples which had lost the new tendency were removed, and seed again saved from the pure whites; the next batch of seedlings was much more white than purple; the next batch was all white, and thus the original sport was fixed.

When the Provins Rose produced a branch on which the flowers were buried among those glandular expansions of the calyx and its footstalk which we call mossiness, the first Moss Rose was born:-that again was a sport.

When some Celosia suddenly formed its flowers upon a thickened, flattened (fasciated) stalk, and they became more crowded than usual, we had a Cockscomb, and that again was a sport. The plant thus changed, by whatever cause, had gained a constitutional tendency to grow in the cockscomb or fasciated manner; by repeatedly saving seed from the most fasciated and the dwarfest seedlings, that which was at first a mere tendency or predisposition became as fixed a constitutional character as was acquired by the greyhound when he first became a new variety of some other kind of dog. This fasciated character was at first a mere monstrosity, such as we see around us here and there in a great variety of plants in which no one has yet thought of fixing the habit. If it has a tendency to disappear under neglect, as those who buy cheap seeds know that it has, so, on the other hand, it has also a tendency to increase under skilful management, as was shown by Mr. Andrew Knight when he, by one single effort, brought

SPORTS ARE OR MAY BECOME PERMANENT.

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a Cockscomb plant to measure eighteen inches across and only seven inches high.*

An analogous change is that represented at Fig. XCVII., which is not at all uncommon in the Canterbury Bell, whose flowering stem becomes fasciated, and the flowers run together

into a magnificent crescent-shaped head. Gardeners have never attempted to fix this striking character, and yet it might perhaps be secured as the Cockscomb.

Mr. Salter, of Hammersmith, observed among his seedling Dahlias one which produced a number of green scaly flowerheads, but no perfect flowers. This was propagated and every plant was covered with similar heads of scales. All the plants were vigorous, but there was not a single perfect flower-head upon any one of them, so that the sport became immediately fixed. (See Fig. XCVIII.)

M. Esprit Fabre observed that a kind of wild Grass (Egilops ovata) was subject to a sport (E. triticoides). Of that sport he sowed the seeds, and he found that while on the one hand there

*This was in 1820. A drawing of this specimen hangs in the library of the Horticultural Society. The manner in which the experiment was conducted is described in the Hort. Trans., vol iv., p. 321.

was no disposition to return to its original form, there was on the other a decided tendency to sport still more. Of that tendency he availed himself with admirable patience. Year by year the change went on-but slowly. Little by little one part

altered or another.

The hungry grain grew plumper; the flour in it increased; its size augmented. The starved ears formed other spikelets; the spikelets at first containing but two flowers at last became capable of yielding four or five. The straw stiffened, the leaves widened, the ears

lengthened, the corn

softened and aug

mented, till at last

Wheat itself stood

Fig. XCVIII.-Monstrous Dahlia.

It is, in fact, through attention to sports that many of the most striking of our flowers and fruit have been obtained. A single dwarf Larkspur sports by chance to double; the seeds of the sport are saved carefully and sown; three-fourths of the seedlings are single, but a few are double; the first are thrown away, the best of the second are saved for seed, and the second crop of seedlings comes truer. Thus arise the race of double Larkspurs. A double Larkspur next sports to a stripe, that is

AND OTHER SPORTS.

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to say, bands of red or of violet appear upon the pale ground of the petals of a few flowers; these flowers are marked, the seed is saved, and so begins the breed of what are called Uniques, at one time the pride of the flower-garden, though now discarded for newer favourites. In the same way, first came Camellias, Chrysanthemums, and others. The old purple Chrysanthemum accidentally sported to buff: the buff branch was struck, proved true to its new nature, and became the ancestor of a race of other buffs. The colour of a red Camellia "breaks;" red streaks appear in the flowers of a sporting branch; that branch is separated, and grafted upon a stout stock; on goes the sportive branch, retains its tendency, produces striped flowers all the better for the new blood infused into them, and the tendency is fixed; skilful gardeners cut it limb from limb, and every mutilated morsel starts into life another variegation.

It is the same with vegetables; a wild Carrot accidentally found in cultivated ground refuses to run to seed, but builds up a root stouter than any Carrot had before. The watchful eyes of a gardener remark the change; the changeling, still a sport, flowers at last; its precious seeds are saved, and committed to still richer ground. Nine-tenths of the seedlings run back to the wild form-but a very few prove obedient to the will of man, shake off their savage habits, refuse to flower till the second year, spend their autumn and winter in the further enlargement of their roots, then rise up into blossom invigorated by six months' additional preparation, and yield other seeds, in which the fixity of character, or habit of domestication, is still more firmly implanted. And thus begins the race of Carrots.

Nectarines, Pears, Peaches, Plums, and other valuable fruits, must be supposed to have in numerous instances derived their origin from similar circumstances; they were far more the children of accident than design, and we see to what they have

come.

Gardeners, then, should keep a watchful eye upon every tendency to sport, which they may remark among the plants entrusted to their care. The sports, however unpromising,