The garden pea has closed flowers and can self-fertilize, but also allow for manual cross-pollination.

Mendel studied inheritance of a single character (or trait, such as flower color) by cross-pollinating two true-breeding varieties of the pea.


This is called a monohybrid cross. When pollen from a white flower fertilizes eggs of a purple flower, the first-generation hybrids (F[1]) all have purple flowers.

continue