[98]

Bot. Zeitung No 24. May 15. 1868

Hildebrand on Potatoes Maize & Apples.

322. 323 I used potatoes (1) of a red sort of somewhat elongated shape with "schülferig" upper surface & (2) of a round white sort with smooth upper surface. Control experiments were made with both & both were shown to be constant I took tubers of both kinds cut all the eyes out & fastened eyes of the other sort in with little bits of wood. I obtained only two plants one white, one red— On digging up in summer I found tubers of one colour resembling the unterlager stock & I found one tuber on each plant which was intermediate. That was best developed which was produced by red eyes grafted on a white tuber. This had a elongated shape & at one end was quite like the red sort in that it had besides the red colour the peculiar surface; the red colour extended to near the middle of the now smooth tuber then came a white region with red stripes, and finally at the other end it was quite white like the unterlager stock on which the red eye had grown.

The opposite [illeg] grafted plant was not so good: but was generally speaking similar

[Variation 2d ed. 1: 420: "In the 'Botanische Zeitung' (May 16, 1868), Professor Hildebrand gives an account with a coloured figure, of his experiments on two varieties which were found during the same season to be constant in character, namely, a somewhat elongated rough-skinned red potato and a rounded smooth white one. He inserted buds reciprocally into both kinds, destroying the other buds. He thus raised two plants, and each of these produced a tuber intermediate in character between the two parent-forms. That from the red bud grafted into the white tuber, was at one end red and rough, as the whole tuber ought to have been if not affected; in the middle it was smooth with red stripes, and at the other end smooth and altogether white like that of the stock."

Hildebrand, Friedrich Hermann Gustav. 1868. Einige Experimente und Beobachtungen 1) über den Einfluss der Unterlage auf das Pfropfreis und 2) über den direkten Einfluss des fremden Pollens auf die Beschaffenheit der durch ihn erzeugten Frucht. Botanische Zeitung 26 (May): 322-328, pl. VI. (whole issue) [Darwin Pamphlet Collection Quarto 117] PDF ]