De Vries Rediscovers Mendel and Plant Genetics Becomes a Science

Plant genetics studies the inherited traits and breeding history of plant species, establishing whether a claimed ancient or sacred plant variety is genetically distinct and how a cultivated plant actually relates to its wild ancestors. The Dutch botanist Hugo de Vries, working independently at the University of Amsterdam, published his rediscovery of Gregor Mendel's long overlooked laws of heredity in 1900, in the same year as the botanists Carl Correns and Erich Tschermak reached the same conclusion independently, giving the study of plant inheritance for the first time a testable, mathematical law rather than only observed resemblance between parent and offspring.

A plant claimed as an ancient sacred variety, a temple grove's particular strain, a ritual herb said to be unchanged since antiquity, is a testable genetic claim once Mendel's laws, rediscovered by de Vries, are applied to it, comparing the plant's actual inherited traits against its relatives rather than accepting a tradition's claim of unbroken continuity on faith. The atlas relies on plant genetics wherever a sacred or ritual plant's claimed lineage, distinctness or antiquity can be tested against documented breeding and inheritance evidence.