. Bulletin of the Department of Agriculture. Agriculture; Agriculture. 26 BULLETIISr 428, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. cago sativa. In the latter instance the names were applied in many cases without knowledge of the hybrid nature of the plants. There is very little justification for the attempts that have been made to describe and name forms of true Medicago falcata^ since the char- acteristics of these forms to which names have been applied are neither definite nor consistently correlated, with other important characters. There would appear to be no justification for the at- tempts
. Bulletin of the Department of Agriculture. Agriculture; Agriculture. 26 BULLETIISr 428, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. cago sativa. In the latter instance the names were applied in many cases without knowledge of the hybrid nature of the plants. There is very little justification for the attempts that have been made to describe and name forms of true Medicago falcata^ since the char- acteristics of these forms to which names have been applied are neither definite nor consistently correlated, with other important characters. There would appear to be no justification for the at- tempts to name and describe unstable hybrids. Tournefort {60) was the first to do this, but he was not aware that the forms with which he dealt were hybrids. More recent botanists likewise have ap- parently failed to appreciate this fact with regard to material com-. FiG. 13.—Individual plant of Medicago falcata, S. P. I. No. 24455, a medium broad crowned plant of ascending habit of growth, representing Group III. ing under their observation, as otherwise they doubtless would have refrained from describing hybrids as species or varieties. It has been possible to find among the department's introductions and selections forms that answer to the description of most of the varieties of Medicago falcata and Medicago sativa that have been proposed by botanists. That many of these forms are hybrids is quite clearly indicated by the fact that their progeny even from one generation of self-fertilized seed breaks up in a manner charac- teristic of hybrids. Furthermore, certain of the so-called varieties have been created as a result of artificial crossing, and there is abundant reason to believe that a great many of them can be origi-. Please note that these images are extracted from scanned page images that may have been digitally enhanced for readability - coloration and appearance of these illustrations may not perfectly resemble the original United States. Dept. of Agriculture. [Wa
Size: 1798px × 1390px
Photo credit: © Book Worm / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: ., bookauth, bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910, booksubjectagriculture
