As the season advanced, one of these plants threw up two naked scapes, 7 inches
in height, which bore umbels of flowers of the same character as before. This
fact led me to examine the other plants after they had flowered and were dug up;
and I found that the flower-peduncles of all sprung from an extremely short
common scape, of which no trace can be found in the pure primrose. Hence these
plants are beautifully intermediate between the oxlip and the primrose,
inclining rather towards the latter; and we may safely conclude that the parent
oxlips had been fertilised by the surrounding primroses.
From the various facts now given, there can be no doubt that the common oxlip is
a hybrid between the cowslip (P. veris, Brit. Fl.) and the primrose (P.
vulgaris, Brit. Fl.), as has been surmised by several botanists. It is probable
that oxlips may be produced either from the cowslip or the primrose as the seed-
bearer, but oftenest from the latter, as I judge from the nature of the stations
in which oxlips are generally found (2/13. See also on this head Hardwicke's
'Science Gossip' 1867 pages 114, 137.), and from the primrose when crossed by
the cowslip being more fertile than, conversely, the cowslip by the primrose.
The hybrids themselves are also rather more fertile when crossed with the
primrose than with the cowslip.
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