who is the austrian monk whose work with pea plants helped him come up with a theory of heredity
Gregor Mendel Gregor Johann Mendel (Czech: Řehoř Jan Mendel;[1] 20 July 1822[2] – 6 January 1884) (English: /ˈmɛndəl/) was a scientist, Augustinian friar and abbot of St. Thomas' Abbey in Brno, Margraviate of Moravia. Mendel was born in a German-speaking family[3] in the Silesian part of the Austrian Empire (today's Czech Republic) and gained posthumous recognition as the founder of the modern science of genetics. Though farmers had known for millennia that crossbreeding of animals and plants could favor certain desirable traits, Mendel's pea plant experiments conducted between 1856 and 1863 established many of the rules of heredity, now referred to as the laws of Mendelian inheritance.[4]
Echium plantagineum in Australia In the 1880s, it was introduced to Australia, probably both as an accidental contaminant of pasture seed and as an ornamental plant. Reportedly, both names for the plant derive from Jane Paterson or Patterson, an early settler of the country near Albury. She brought the first seeds from Europe to beautify a garden, and then could only watch helplessly as the weed infested previously productive pastures for many miles around.