To Asa Gray 17 February [1878]1
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.2 Hooker has been here 2 or 3 times (as Lady H. has been here for a fortnight as a sanatarium)3 & I told him about Linum perenne & he was interested & looked to his Colorado specimens.4 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.—5
Yours affectionately | Ch. Darwin
Footnotes
Bibliography
Baker, Herbert G. 1965. Charles Darwin and the perennial flax—a controversy and its implications. Huntia 2: 141–61.
Forms of flowers 2d ed.: The different forms of flowers on plants of the same species. 2d edition. By Charles Darwin. London: John Murray. 1880.
Forms of flowers: The different forms of flowers on plants of the same species. By Charles Darwin. London: John Murray. 1877.
Summary
Heterostyly in Linum perenne. Believes the American form may be a distinct species.
Letter details
- Letter no.
- DCP-LETT-11364
- From
- Charles Robert Darwin
- To
- Asa Gray
- Sent from
- Down
- Source of text
- Archives of the Gray Herbarium, Harvard University (129)
- Physical description
- ALS 3pp
Please cite as
Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 11364,” accessed on 19 April 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-11364.xml