. Bulletin. Agriculture. l(i DIMORPHIC LEAVES IN RELATION TO HEREDITY. (liniorpliic variety than in the lobed leaves. The smallest teeth are found on the specimens with the very nan'ow digitate lobes. (See figs. 5 and 6.) Examples of transition forms of leaves seem to be more common on plants with rather small, narrow-pointed, sharjoly dentate leaves than in plants with larger leaves and less numerous teeth. (See PI. II, A, B, C, and D.) It is not impossible that these differences represent distinct varieties or strains. There is no reason to suppose that the Egyptian varieties of this plant h
. Bulletin. Agriculture. l(i DIMORPHIC LEAVES IN RELATION TO HEREDITY. (liniorpliic variety than in the lobed leaves. The smallest teeth are found on the specimens with the very nan'ow digitate lobes. (See figs. 5 and 6.) Examples of transition forms of leaves seem to be more common on plants with rather small, narrow-pointed, sharjoly dentate leaves than in plants with larger leaves and less numerous teeth. (See PI. II, A, B, C, and D.) It is not impossible that these differences represent distinct varieties or strains. There is no reason to suppose that the Egyptian varieties of this plant have been subjected to any more close or careful selection than the Egyp- tian varieties of cotton, which were found to exhibit a wide range of diversity. In Hooker's "Flora of British India" the leaves of Hibiscus cannabinus are described in two slightly different ways, once "Lower leaves entire, upper lobed," and again "Lower leaves cordate, upper deeply palmately lobed, lobes narrow ; The narrow-lobed variety shown in figures 5 and 6 would seem to conform most nearly to this description, though none of the lower leaves are shown in the pressed specimens of tliis variety in the Economic Herbarium of the United States Department of Agriculture. The species seems not to be represented in the National Herbarium. The leaves of the Egyptian varieties would hardly be described as cor- date, though some of those in Plate II show a slight reentrant angle at the base. The lobing of the leaves of the dimorpliic Egyptian variety is not unlike that of the plant depicted as Ilibiscus cannabinus in Rox- burgh's "Plants of the Coast of Coromandel" (vol. 2, pi. 190), except that some of the upper leaves are shown with five lobes. Though no such leaves were seen on the Egyptian plants in July it is quite possible that they occur later in the season. Rox- burgh also gives a separate figure of a simple narrowly lanceolate leaf and states that this
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