Intermittent Germination of Capsella

Abstract

PREVIOUSLY, I have directed attention to the prevalence of intermittent germination as a feature of the most successful of our annual garden weeds and suggested that human cultivation activities have probably effected an artificial selection of strains that has accentuated this feature¹. Attention was there directed to the need for sowing freshly ripened seeds from individual plants to avoid the concealment of this feature, through overlap of the germination flushes from seeds of different individuals or seeds stored for varying periods. These conditions, however, frequently impose a severe limitation on the number of seeds available for any one test and it might therefore be suggested that if a considerably augmented number of seeds were simultaneously ripened the intermittence would be appreciably diminished or might actually disappear.