Mutant Groups in Nature

Abstract

WHILE staying at Val d'Isère (Savoie) this summer, I noticed some facts which seem worthy of record as bearing on the evolutionary importance of mutations. Gentiana campestris L. was an abundant plant in many localities round the village. Not infrequently variants were noted in which the corolla was white and the leaves paler green than normal (“albinos”). It is not to be doubted that such forms have arisen from the type by a recessive mutation. Sometimes these mutants were found singly. This is in my experience the usual state of affairs with white-flowered mutants of other wild species (e.g. wild hyacinth), and was also the case with pink-tinged Saxifraga oppositifolia noted by me in Spitsbergen in 1921.