Pisum = Pisum A genus of the Fabaceae, with three species, one of which is the pea. Notes by Mendel on the front and back endpapers of Carl Friedrich Gärtner’s Versuche und Beobachtungen zur Bastarderzeugung im Pflanzenreich (Stuttgart: Hering, 1849, Mendel Museum, Collection of the Augustinian Abbey) demonstrate that his choice of Pisum was strongly influenced by Gärtner’s observations on members of this genus; see Robert C. Olby, Origins of Mendelism, 2nd editon (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985), pp. 212–213 and pl. 12. Mendel’s notes discuss Geum alongside Pisum, and were thus probably inspired from a remark by Gärtner that hybrid traits show up more distinctly in the flowers and fruits of these two genera (loc. cit., p. 263–264). Another motivation for Mendel’s choice may have been Gärtner’s report of Thomas Andrew Knight’s (1759–1838) hybridisation experiments with Pisum sativum varieties that differed by the colour of the seeds (loc. cit., p. 80). Mendel’s notes on Pisum are rather independent of Gärtner’s text, though, and contain information that Mendel must have drawn from elsewhere. In the manuscript, Mendel underlined Pisum which was reproduced by the printer by spacing. In addition, however, Mendel wrote the word Pisum, like all other taxonomic names in the manuscript, in Latin cursive, rather than the German cursive he used for the rest of the manuscript, to highlight them as technical terms. See p. 6, s. 15 for further discussion.