If the reverted bud had only lost the power of producing spikes, they
would evidently simply have returned to the characteristics of the
ordinary species, and their color would have been a pale pink. Instead
of this, all flowers displayed corollas of a deep brown. They obviously
reverted to their special progenitor, the chance variety from which they
had sprung, and not to the common prototype of the species. Of course it
was not possible to ascertain from which variety the plant had really
originated, but the reproduction of any one clearly defined varietal
mark is in itself proof enough of their origin, and of the latency of
the dark brown flower-color in this special case.
A still better proof is afforded by a new type of green dahlia. The
ordinary green dahlia [230] has large tufts of green bracts instead of
flowering heads, the scales of the receptacle having assumed the texture
and venation of leaves, and being in some measure as fleshy. But the
green heads retain the form of the ordinary flower-heads, and as they
have no real florets that may fade away, they remain unchanged on the
plants, and increase in number through the whole summer. The new types
of green dahlia however, with which I have now to deal, are
distinguished by the elongation of the axis of the head, which is
thereby changed into a long leafy stalk, attaining a length of several
inches.
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