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Darwin Correspondence Project

From M. T. Masters   21 September 1869

Gardeners’ Chronicle | & Agricultural Gazette Office, | 41, Wellington Street, Strand, W.C.

Septr. 21 1869

My dear Sir/

Many thanks for your note and the accompanying pamphlets.1

At the Hort. Soc. meeting to day Mr Fenn (Rectory Woodstock) showed some Potatos which would I think have interested you had you seen them viz. 1. results of grafting potatos—all failures except one which may be all right ‘Milky white’ grafted into a fluke— result an inferior potato having the characters of both parents2

2d. A large series of tubers the result of a single cross between a round red potato & a white round. The offspring are of all sorts sizes shapes colors degrees of hardihood etc—but what is most curious is that he has got among them a small round mottled tuber which is almost precisely identical with some so called wild tubers grown in Peru—a nice case of reversion!—3 The half bloods exhibit traces of the blood of both parents in very varying degrees— I asked him to forward you samples— He assures me he took great pains to prevent crop fertilisation with other sorts but as I understand the experiments were conducted en pleine terre   foreign pollen may have been introduced without his knowledge   In any case the reversion fact remains

Believe me | faithfully yrs | Maxwell. T. Masters

Footnotes

CD’s note to Masters has not been found. The pamphlets may have been offprints of ‘Notes on the fertilization of orchids’.
Robert Fenn was a steward to Woodstock Rectory, Oxfordshire (R. Desmond 1994). His experiments with potatoes, presented at the Royal Horticultural Society, were reported in Gardeners’ Chronicle 39 (1869): 1011–12. CD had discussed hybrid potatoes produced by grafting in Variation 1: 395–6. See also Correspondence vol. 16, letter from Friedrich Hildebrand, 2 January 1868, and letter to Friedrich Hildebrand, 5 January [1868].
CD discussed reversion arising from crossing in Variation 2: 39–47.

Bibliography

Correspondence: The correspondence of Charles Darwin. Edited by Frederick Burkhardt et al. 29 vols to date. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1985–.

Desmond, Ray. 1994. Dictionary of British and Irish botanists and horticulturists including plant collectors, flower painters and garden designers. New edition, revised with the assistance of Christine Ellwood. London: Taylor & Francis and the Natural History Museum. Bristol, Pa.: Taylor & Francis.

‘Fertilization of orchids’: Notes on the fertilization of orchids. By Charles Darwin. Annals and Magazine of Natural History 4th ser. 4 (1869): 141–59. [Collected papers 2: 138–56.]

Variation: The variation of animals and plants under domestication. By Charles Darwin. 2 vols. London: John Murray. 1868.

Summary

Robert Fenn exhibited potatoes at the Horticultural Society which showed general failure of graft-hybrids and provided an example of reversion to a wild Peruvian tuber resulting from cross-fertilisation.

Letter details

Letter no.
DCP-LETT-6902
From
Maxwell Tylden Masters
To
Charles Robert Darwin
Sent from
Gardeners’ Chronicle
Source of text
DAR 171: 81
Physical description
ALS 4pp

Please cite as

Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 6902,” accessed on 25 April 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-6902.xml

Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 17

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