Mutation With Orchids (1928)
Lucien Reychler

Ordinary Cattleya labiata.	Mutant A of Cattleya labiata - with regard to the dimension of the petals
Mutant B of Cattleya labiata - with regard to the number of the petals	Mme. Lucien Reychler (Mutant B x Mutant A)

Mme. Etienne Rabaud (Mutant A x L.C. Colmaniana) L.C. Colmaniana - Cattleya Aurea x L.C. Arnoldiana L.C. Arnoldiana - Laelia purpurata x Cattleya Gigas

By the publication of the preceding pages, scientists and practical men can convince themselves, as I pointed out in the preface, of the important part that can be played by Mutation among plants and, consequently, of the importance of all research which tends to provoke it systematically.

After this, I venture to recall here how full of interest are the researches published in my previous booklets, the names of which will be found on one of the first pages of this album.

I specially draw your attention to the importance of the problems considered in the pamphlet entitled Concerning the possibility of provoking systematically among plants

a) the appearance of new vital phenomena;

b) Mutation.

1° Fertilization after operation direct in the ovary.

2° a) premature germination.
    b) premature germination after liberation of the germ by operation.

3° Methods called "cultivation in distinct environment"

All this can be summed up as follows causing the sexual elements and the beings in formation to grow and to develop in the ovary, under conditions different from the natural ones.

And this in order to succeed in breaking the initial rhythm of growth of the species which the pollen parent and seed parent strive to confer hereditarily on the descent and thus result in provoking systematically the appearance of new, hereditary, phenomena, namely Mutation.

Numberless researchers, scientists as well as practical men will rush one day to the conquest of these unexplored fields which are opening out both to Botanical Biology and to Horticultural Science.

The results will not be long in coming, only some dozen years will be necessary before they are fully developed. These new fields of work that I have had the luck or the Mission to discover in the plant world are, moreover inexhaustible. They will interest Mankind as long as they take an interest in Botanical Biology or Horticultural Science and the methods of investigation which I advocate will remain, in their main points of course, probably unchanged.

I have therefore the right, as I repeat on every occasion, to expect "that my researches be taken up during my lifetime, that they be completed and continued". It was with this wish that I ended the preface and I wish it to end my conclusion also.

Lucien REYCHLER

January 1928