fertilisation cells = Befruchtungs-Zellen Both Bateson and Sherwood have “reproductive cells”. Befruchtung, however, is more specific than reproduction, meaning fertilisation or fecundation. Mendel’s teacher at Vienna University, Franz Unger, restricted this term to the (male) reproductive cells, which separate from their original context and are necessary to fertilise what he called the (female) “egg cells” (Eizellen); see Franz Unger, Anatomie und Physiologie der Pflanzen (Budapest: C. A. Hartleben, 1855), pp. 387–388. Other authors on plant fertilisation that Mendel is likely to have been familiar with — like Giovanni Battista Amici, who discovered the pollen tube (“Note sur le mode d’action du pollen sur le stigmate”, Annales des sciences naturelles, 21, 1830, pp. 92–101); Johann Jacob Schleiden, who for a long time believed that the pollen cell contained the embryo (“Beiträge zur Phytogenesis”, Archiv für Anatomie, Physiologie und wissenschaftliche Medicin, 1838, pp. 137–176); Wilhelm Hofmeister, who identified the “egg cell” in angiosperms (“Untersuchungen des Vorganges bei der Befruchtung der Oenothereen”, Botanische Zeitung, 5, 1847, pp. 785–792); Hugo von Mohl, who spoke of Eichen (ovules) and Pollen with respect to phanerogams (Grundzüge der Anatomie und Physiologie der vegetabilischen Zelle, Brauschweig: Vieweg 1851); or Nathanael Pringsheim, who established sexual reproduction in algae (Über die Befruchtung und Keimung der Algen und das Wesen des Zeugungsactes, Berlin: Königl. Akademie der Wissenschaften 1855) — usually claimed that parental and maternal contributions to the plant embryo were assymetric and did not use a common term for both kinds of cells. A possible exception is an article in Czech that was published by the renowned physiologist Jan Evangelista Purkyně in 1860, shortly after he had visited the monastery in Brno; see Vítězslav Orel, Gregor Mendel: The First Geneticist (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1996). Mendel’s Befruchtungszellen clearly are what we would nowadays call “gametes”, and include both (male) pollen cells and (female) egg cells, or “germ cells” (Keimzellen) as Mendel calls them. Tschermak still found it necessary in his 1901 edition of Mendel’s paper to explain this terminology (Gregor Mendel, Versuche über Pflanzenhybriden, edited by Erich von Tschermak, Leipzig: Wilhelm Engelmann 1901, p. 23, n. 18). It is not unlikely that Mendel’s terminology resulted from a fusion of Gärtner’s observation that reciprocal crossings produce the same types of hybrids — an observation that Mendel found confirmed in his experiments (see p. 11, s. 2) and which he even radicalized by denying Gärtner’s claim that the two factors were nevertheless not necessarily in equilibrium (see p. 45, s. 3) — and contemporary cytological work on plant fertilisation. Mendel’s “final remarks” at the end of his paper contain a long footnote justifying the assumption that male and female “fertilisation cells” contribute equally to the formation of the embryo (see p. 41). There are instances, however, were Mendel as well engages in a language of asymmetric roles of the sexes; see, e.g., p. 24, s. 6, p. 30, s. 1, p. 30, s. 10 and p. 45, s. 7.
fertilisation cells = Befruchtungs-Zellen Both Bateson and Sherwood have “reproductive cells”. Befruchtung, however, is more specific than reproduction, meaning fertilisation or fecundation. Mendel’s teacher at Vienna University, Franz Unger, restricted this term to the (male) reproductive cells, which separate from their original context and are necessary to fertilise what he called the (female) “egg cells” (Eizellen); see Franz Unger, Anatomie und Physiologie der Pflanzen (Budapest: C. A. Hartleben, 1855), pp. 387–388. Other authors on plant fertilisation that Mendel is likely to have been familiar with — like Giovanni Battista Amici, who discovered the pollen tube (“Note sur le mode d’action du pollen sur le stigmate”, Annales des sciences naturelles, 21, 1830, pp. 92–101); Johann Jacob Schleiden, who for a long time believed that the pollen cell contained the embryo (“Beiträge zur Phytogenesis”, Archiv für Anatomie, Physiologie und wissenschaftliche Medicin, 1838, pp. 137–176); Wilhelm Hofmeister, who identified the “egg cell” in angiosperms (“Untersuchungen des Vorganges bei der Befruchtung der Oenothereen”, Botanische Zeitung, 5, 1847, pp. 785–792); Hugo von Mohl, who spoke of Eichen (ovules) and Pollen with respect to phanerogams (Grundzüge der Anatomie und Physiologie der vegetabilischen Zelle, Brauschweig: Vieweg 1851); or Nathanael Pringsheim, who established sexual reproduction in algae (Über die Befruchtung und Keimung der Algen und das Wesen des Zeugungsactes, Berlin: Königl. Akademie der Wissenschaften 1855) — usually claimed that parental and maternal contributions to the plant embryo were assymetric and did not use a common term for both kinds of cells. A possible exception is an article in Czech that was published by the renowned physiologist Jan Evangelista Purkyně in 1860, shortly after he had visited the monastery in Brno; see Vítězslav Orel, Gregor Mendel: The First Geneticist (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1996). Mendel’s Befruchtungszellen clearly are what we would nowadays call “gametes”, and include both (male) pollen cells and (female) egg cells, or “germ cells” (Keimzellen) as Mendel calls them. Tschermak still found it necessary in his 1901 edition of Mendel’s paper to explain this terminology (Gregor Mendel, Versuche über Pflanzenhybriden, edited by Erich von Tschermak, Leipzig: Wilhelm Engelmann 1901, p. 23, n. 18). It is not unlikely that Mendel’s terminology resulted from a fusion of Gärtner’s observation that reciprocal crossings produce the same types of hybrids — an observation that Mendel found confirmed in his experiments (see p. 11, s. 2) and which he even radicalized by denying Gärtner’s claim that the two factors were nevertheless not necessarily in equilibrium (see p. 45, s. 3) — and contemporary cytological work on plant fertilisation. Mendel’s “final remarks” at the end of his paper contain a long footnote justifying the assumption that male and female “fertilisation cells” contribute equally to the formation of the embryo (see p. 41). There are instances, however, were Mendel as well engages in a language of asymmetric roles of the sexes; see, e.g., p. 24, s. 6, p. 30, s. 1, p. 30, s. 10 and p. 45, s. 7.