I have sown the seeds of this plant repeatedly, either from normal or
from twisted stems, but without better results. It was highly desirable
to be able to offer instances of this rare and interesting peculiarity
to other universities and museums, but no improvement of the race could
be reached and I have been constrained to give it up. My twisted
valerian is a poor race, and hardly anything can be done with it.
Perhaps, in other countries the corresponding rich race may be hidden
somewhere, but I have never had the good fortune of finding it.
This good fortune however, I did have with the wild teasel or _Dipsacus
sylvestris_. [404] Stems of this and of allied species are often met
with and have been described by several writers, but they were always
considered as accidents and nobody had ever tried to cultivate them. In
the summer of 1885 I saw among a lot of normal wild teasels, two nicely
twisted stems in the botanical garden of Amsterdam. I at once proposed
to ascertain whether they would yield a hereditary race and had all the
normal individuals thrown away before the flowering time. My two plants
flowered in this isolated condition and were richly pollinated by
insects. Of course, at that time, I knew nothing of the dependency of
monstrosities on external conditions, and made the mistake of sowing the
seeds and cultivating the next generation in too great numbers on a
small space.
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