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According to the revisionist interpretation of Mendel’s pea crosses, his primary aim was not to study the inheritance of traits. Instead, he was interested in the question raised by Linnaeus as to whether new species could arise from the hybridization of existing species. The genetic interpretation is therefore seen as ahistorical by the revisionists. This view goes back to the 1979 article “Mendel no Mendelian?” by the historian of science R.C. Olby. A closer analysis shows that Olby implicitly assumed Mendel adhered to the unusual strictest species definition for Pisum. However, we argue that Mendel only mentions the hypothetical application of this strict definition in his 1866 paper. Like most of his contemporaries, Mendel accepted variation within species where the differences between varieties and species were a matter of degree. After researching variable hybrids in peas (Pisum; 1854–1863), Mendel also studied constant hybrids in hawkweeds (Hieracium; 1866–1873), which he considered to be new species. There is no debate about the latter, but the matter becomes muddled because Olby lumps Pisumand Hieraciumtogether, despite their having completely different reproduction systems. Based on newly discovered historical sources, we also dispute several other assumptions made by Olby. We do not consider Olby’s claim that Mendel conducted the Pisumexperiments to investigate species multiplication to be tenable.

The organization of methylated rDNA repeats of radish and pea is described and it is shown that methylated repeats and non-methylated repeats are interspersed one with another. Methylated arrays are not much longer than 100 kb, or about 10 repeat units in length.

Total DNA was extracted from young green and etiolated barley leaf shoots and run on 2D neutral/alkaline agarose gels. This technique showed the presence of molecules which behaved as though their single-stranded length was twice their double-stranded length. This behaviour was sensitive to S1 nuclease. Our conclusion is that these DNAs are hairpin molecules. They are homologous to sequences found throughout the barley chloroplast genome. This type of molecule is present in uncut DNA with a continuous range of sizes varying between 0.5 and 15 kbp in our experimental conditions. The origin and possible biological function of these molecules is discussed.