Memorials of John Ray / edited by Edwin Lankester.

Date:
1846
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Memorials of John Ray / edited by Edwin Lankester. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    229/242 (page 211)
    times seen some branches bearing double, others single flowers. By the by, let me note, that I have by expe- rience found the vulgar mistaken in that opinion current among them, that the seed of those flowers which have more than the usual and just number of leaves, will pro- duce plants bearmg double flowers; for from the seed of the stock July flowers, succeeding flowers that were of five and six leaves apiece (whereas the usual number in that plant is but four) I had not one double-flowered plant sprung. Secondly, as for fruit-trees, we may observe that the main difference between these pretended distinct species, consists in the figure and taste of the fruit, or pericar- pium ; which accidents are also wholly to be attributed to the difference of the soil, and the various ways of insition. For the means, and I suspect the only means, to get new fruits, is by sowing the seeds or kernels of apples and pears in good ground, which will give you wildings of a different figure and taste from their mother fruits, whose tastes may be mended and improved by insition. But that by insition new sorts of pears or apples (I mean different both as to figure, colour, mag- nitude and taste) may be produced, is to me scarce credible; because I have hitherto embraced for an universal and undoubted maxim, that the fruit follows the cyon. As for plants of striped or variegated leaves, viz., gilded box, holly, alaternus, rosemary, bittersweet, mug- wort, hyssop, mint, thyme, &c., there is less reason to allow them to be different species than either the fore- mentioned flowers and fruits; because, that by several applications to the roots of those plants, they may be so altered from the ordinary colours; these marks being but the symptoms of a morbid constitution of the plant, induced by the foresaid applications. And, as we observed in flowers, the seed will give you a plant void of those marks, which are propagated in the slip or branch.