ABSTRACT

Two papers by Hugo de Vries were published in March 1900. One of these was really composed a little earlier than the paper read to the German Botanical Society on March 24th. The plants mentioned by de Vries as having been used in his experiments are: Agrostemma, Chelidonium, Coreopsis, Datura, Hyoscyamus, Lychnis, Oenothera, Solanum, Trifolium, and Veronica. Segregation was found to occur in ratios which agreed perfectly with those worked out by Gregor Johann Mendel in his experiments, and the expressions “dominant” and “recessive” were used—but, remarkably enough, the name of Mendel was not mentioned in this first paper. Publishing soon afterwards, in the “Zeitschrift zur land-wirtschaftlichen Versuchswesen in Oesterreich”, a more detailed account of his work, Erich Tschermak gives a full account of the experiments he had begun in the Ghent botanical gardens and had continued at Esslingen in Lower Austria. Here, once more, he refers to the discovery of dominance as the most outstanding of Mendel’s achievements.