The co-relation of the presence of the long shoots to the number of abnormal dwarf shoots is shown below:—
- Plants with long shoots (branched) ... ... 90
- Plants without long shoots (unbranched)... ... 10
- Plants with normal shoots only ... ... 5 1
- Plants with abnormal shoots also ... ... 5 )
It will be seen from this that 50% unbranched plants show the presence of abnormal shoots in addition to the normal shoots, while 52 out of 90, i.e., nearly 58 %, of branched plants possess the same peculiarity. This small difference has probably no significance. A very interesting point, however, is that that all the abnormal shoots on these 5 plants were 4-leaved. The details are as follows:—
Two plants possessed only one such shoot each ; one possessed 5 such shoots; one possessed 8 such shoots, and one possessed 13 such shoots. This last plant was growing in a larger pot than the others.
This relation between the absence of long shoots and the presence of 4-leaved abnormal dwarf shoots only (of course in addition to normal shoots) can hardly be accidental. Of course some branched plants also had 4-leaved shoots, either alone or along with other abnormal shoots, but no unbranched plants were found with any but 4-leaved abnormal shoots. The large size of the pot in one case may explain the large number of the 4-leaved shoots in that plant, but hardly the fact that all shoots were 4-leaved and not even one 5-leaved. Another fact which was noticed in this connection was that plants with few and small branches showed a greater tendency on the whole to form abnormal shoots than plants with long and many shoots but no exact numbers were obtained.
Below is given an analysis of the plants which possessed five or more abnormal shoots. The total number of such plants was 12. Nine plants had purely 4-leaved shoots as follows:—
- 4 with 5 such shoots.
- 1 with 7 such shoots.
- 2 with 8 such shoots.
- 1 with 10 such shoots.
- 1 with 13 such shoots.
A combination of 2-and 4-leaved shoots with more than five shoots occurred in one plant:—2-leaved shoots, 2; 4-leaved shoots, 5.
A combination of 4-and 5-leaved shoots with more than five shoots occurred in one plant:—4-leaved shoots, 8; 5-leaved shoots, 3.
A combination of 2-, 4-and 5-leaved shoots with more than five shoots occurred in one plant:—2-leaved shoots, 1; 4-leaved shoots, 7; 5-leaved shoots, 1.
