Science: New Flowers by X-Rays

For the first time two new flowers, created by the genetic effect of X-rays on seeds, were offered by a nurseryman to U.S. gardeners this week. Both flowers are calendulas, one a large, golden, double-petaled variety, the other an orange semidouble.

Both had their origin in seeds exposed to X-rays in 1933 by Genetecist Ernest Brown Babcock of the University of California. The X-rays ionized—or "electrified"—the seeds' nuclei, kneading their chromosomes into unusual patterns which produced the two desirably abnormal plants* (as well as a number of other undesirably abnormal freaks, grotesques and runts)....