He knew it must be a cross between

He knew it must be a cross between the two varieties. He crossed his new plants, and the next year revealed a bounty of different combinations of shapes and colours. Like Austrian monk Gregor Mendel, whose experiments with peas presaged the modern science of genetics, he started to deduce how the plant’s traits were inherited. The red colour was dominant, prevailing over the green. And so were the frilly leaves, explaining how he happened to see a red salad bowl in his very first cross.