From Richard Trevor Clarke [after 25 November 1862]1
Welton Place | near Daventry
My dear Sir
I have just read your letter of enquiry about Strawberries in the Cottage Gardener.2
I have been at them for years and here follows all I have been able to ascertain. Myatts British Queen with hautbois pollen produces luxuriant robust very florid plants with numerous anthers, apparently fertile They were however barren though fertized from other strawberries, with one exception in a plant which bears a few dry ill formed fruit from this I have raised one solitary plant but have not yet fruited it— Alpine and wild crossed with Myatt and Keens Seedling also barren with, also, one exception The excepted plant can scarcely be called fertile the fruit swells bearing a few seeds one or two on each fruit protruding in a curious way from the fleshy receptacle. In this case also I have raised one seedling not yet adult. Hautbois xd by Myatt produced seedlings so exactly resembling the mother that I doubt the cross. They are however all but one real hermaphrodites full of anthers and most prolific.—3
Amongst a batch of crossed seedlings between various sorts in which experiment I remember using Hautbois pollen and having HB plants in the vicinity of the parents, I found a very interesting plant The flavour is strongly musky and the general appearance of the fruit very peculiar. Now this plant in the second year of fruiting that is to say this spring sent up a spike of bloom from a distinct crown (the centre one) nearly, nay almost exactly resembling the hautbois in appearance and flavour.
I must observe this individual closely next season and should be happy to send you a fruiting plant in a pot
In great haste very truly yours | R Trevor Clarke
CD annotations
Footnotes
Bibliography
Variation: The variation of animals and plants under domestication. By Charles Darwin. 2 vols. London: John Murray. 1868.
Summary
Replies to CD’s inquiry about cross-breeds of strawberries [Collected papers 2: 70]. Has been crossing for years.
Letter details
- Letter no.
- DCP-LETT-3829
- From
- Richard Trevor Clarke
- To
- Charles Robert Darwin
- Sent from
- Daventry
- Source of text
- DAR 161.2: 166
- Physical description
- ALS 6pp †
Please cite as
Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 3829,” accessed on 20 April 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-3829.xml
Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 10