Shirley Poppy - Genetics of Shirley Poppies

Genetics of Shirley Poppies

The striking example of deviation from a wild type under artificial selection provided by the Shirley poppy attracted the attention of pioneer geneticists and biometricians. The biometrician Karl Pearson used the Shirley poppy to study his ideas of homotyposis, which he defined as “the quantitative degree of resemblance to be found on the average between the like parts of organisms”. However Pearson's work on Shirley poppy was ridiculed by the pioneer geneticist William Bateson for ignoring the recently discovered analytical methods of Mendelian genetics. Bateson wrote: "Misconception of the nature and significance of intermediates has deprived the work of the biometrical school of scientific value as a contribution to the study of heredity. This is well seen in the case of the colours of the Shirley Poppies, one of the subjects with reference to which copious statistics have been amassed and published". The rancorous debate between genetics and biometrics, in which the Shirley poppy became embroiled, was only resolved through the work of Ronald Fisher who showed that the two schools of thought were actually compatible.