I first read about Lysenko around 1977. I was working part time in the library at K-State, and handling many books I might never have seen otherwise. Good times! So I read a bit about Lysenko, along with some of his colleagues. I read a good deal of C. D. Darlington, before I learned what a racist he was, and a hypocrite for supporting the bizarre notion that social classes have their roots in genetics. Darlington was reportedly born into the poorest of poor. I’m thinking Onslo and Daisy on Keeping up Appearances. I also had the very good fortune to encounter some splendid researchers associated with the USDA in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
The more I learned about Lysenko, the more clearly I saw how some of his critics resorted to blatant lies to smear his name. The man was not an ignorant peasant, as some (especially in England) would claim. Funny how these same people carefully ignored that Mendel was also the son of peasant farmers. And the dangerous fact that Nils, a Swedish peasant boy with no surname, would have a son who became Sir Carl von Linne. That’s a pretty quick progression from peasant to nobleman. I think Darlington would have trouble explaining in genetic terms.
But coming back to the subject at hand, I have some examples of characters apparently being acquired at some time, them being lost when environmental conditions change.
Allen (1898)
A number of years ago I brought from Stanstead, in the Province of Quebec, a few ears of corn which ripened there, in a climate where there was not a month in a year without frost. This corn did not grow more than four feet high, yet each stalk produced two small but perfect ears of sound yellow corn, in the six weeks it had to perfect its growth. This corn was planted on the east shore of Cayuga Lake, and astonished the grower by reproducing itself by the 1st of August. He thought his fortune made, and he planted all the product the next year for seed purposes. But his early corn was no longer early; finding it had four months, instead of six weeks to do its work, it took all the time, and the farmer had a fine crop of yellow eight-rowed corn, the same as is now generally grown in the northern part of the State.
http://bulbnrose.x10.mx/Heredity/AllenHorticulture1898.html
Tracey (1904)
Speaking first of leguminous plants, in the ‘Extra Early’ varieties of garden peas the desirable form of vine is one eighteen to forty inches high, and of a determinate growth, by which term I mean a vine that before the lowest and first formed pod has become too large for use as green peas, has completed its elongation and has its apex crowned by a well-formed pod or at least one well out of the blossom. The objectionable form is a vine twenty-four to sixty inches in height, which even when the lowest pod is fully ripe is still growing having its apex covered with blossoms and buds. Such plants as these last are called by seedmen ‘wicks’ or ‘offs,’ and a stock of ‘Extra Early’ peas is valued in inverse proportion to the number of such plants it produces. I never have seen a stock which did not occasionally produce them, and in number varying with different conditions of cultivation. On very rich soils, or those which have been recently fertilized with stable manure, there will be a great many more such plants developed than on a poorer soil. A stock which, when grown on a white clay soil of uniform composition, will ripen down very uniformly and not show more than a dozen such ‘offs’ to the acre, will, when planted on a mucky soil or one which has been enriched by fresh stable manure, give a dozen ‘offs’ to the square rod.
As an illustration in detail is a case when three large fields of very favorable soil were planted with the same stock, two of them when visited showed practically no ‘offs,’ nor were there many to be seen in the third field, except in a double row of circles, each about ten feet in diameter, where piles of manure had been spread, and in each of them there were twelve to twenty-five bad ‘offs’ more than could be found on an acre of the rest of the field.
Seedsmen find that if the seed from such ‘off’ plants grown from good stock is planted on soils favorable for the development of the true type, it will produce few, very few, often no more ‘off’ plants than seed from plants of the true type grown from the same stock; but if seed from the ‘off’ plants is sown on soil favorable for the development of ‘off’ plants, they will produce more ‘offs’ than seeds from the true type, and this tendency to produce ‘off’ plants on either favorable or unfavorable soil increases very rapidly with the number of consecutive generations of ‘off’ plants back of the seed in question. An illustration was given of precisely similar results with ‘American Wonder’ peas when the character of soil favorable for the most desirable type is the opposite of that favorable for the best ‘Extra Earlies.’
http://bulbnrose.x10.mx/Heredity/Tracy/Tracy_Peas1904.html
Winter-flowering Sweet Peas (1907)
Mr. Svolanek states that he finds it necessary each year to grow his stock seed under glass, as in the beginning, because the varieties quickly revert to the ordinary type of spring-flowering Peas if not so handled.
http://bulbnrose.x10.mx/Heredity/SvolanekSwtPeas1907.html