Down, | Beckenham, Kent. | Railway Station | Orpington. S.E.R.
Feb. 17th
My dear Gray
I thank you much for your pleasant letter of Feb. 3d. Hooker
has been here 2 or 3 times (as Lady H. has been here for a
fortnight as a sanatarium) & I told him about Linum perenne & he was
interested & looked to his Colorado specimens. He finds ``the American form is
less strongly heterostyled than the European, & that the stamens &
styles are even equal in some specimens''; but he also finds variability in length in
the European specimens.—
If I was forced to wager I wd. bet that the American form would
prove at least functionally a distinct species.— If you could get &
send me seed of the Colorado form, I wd grow both forms & see if
they could be intercrossed artificially, & I would try whether the homostyled
individuals were self-fertile.—
Yours affectionately | Ch. Darwin
