July
1929
By chance we made a stop that afforded us some utterly mysterious sights. In front of us was a field of peculiar plants. On closer inspection the plants turned out to be flax, but a kind of flax with white flowers, narrow petals and white seeds [Linum usitatissimum L. var. albiflorae Vav.]. All colours of the flax had been drained from it. Instead of the blue-flowered, brown-seeded type, it had become an albino race of its own. And, in addition, there were both yellow- and white-fleshed carrots! [1] The same general pattern also prevailed among the wild flora, which was exceptionally poor, as if it had been reduced in numbers, genera and colours. For instance, the camel’s thorn [Alhagi maurorum] with red flowers had here become white-flowered or, rather, it had pale yellow flowers.
Our investigations definitely pointed to the role of inbreeding and to selection of so-called genetically recessive forms as a result of the isolation of the Chinese Turkestan oases. Barriers such as the Pamirs, the Kun’-Lun’ and Tien-Shan ranges and the Himalayas, as well the Takla-Makan desert prevent both wild and cultivated floras from entering. Only fragments of them have reached the oases, where over a long period of time they have been transformed into variants of the original kinds, like the white-flowered and white-seeded species mentioned above. Wheat, barley and rice are also represented here by pale-coloured forms. In other words, this is like Inner Asia, only with poor and impoverished survivors, reduced in colour. There is no basis whatsoever for stating, as Solms-Laubach did, that Central Asia is the homeland of the bread grains. On the contrary, there is no doubt that only secondary, adopted, impoverished and reduced forms are found here.
Notes:
- I can find no record of Vavilov’s white-flowered flax, but white and yellow carrots are now thought to predate the familiar orange types. [↩]
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