What did Mendel discover after crossing the parental ("P") generation of each of the contrasting character pairs? What did Mendel surmise from his discovery? What did Mendel term the characters that were expressed in the F1 generation; what did he term the characters that were never expressed?
Mendel discovered that all the first ("F1") generation peas from each of the seven crossed characters always took on only one of the two contrasting parental forms and always took on the same parental form. Thus, seven forms were always expressed by the F1 generation peas while seven forms were never expressed. For example, when Mendel crossed peas that had green pods with peas that had yellow pods, all the F1 generation peas from such a cross always had green pods. Mendel surmised that one form of each character took precedence over the other form. He termed the forms, such as the green pods, that appeared in the F1 generation of peas, dominant, and the forms, such as the yellow pods, that did not appear in the F1 generation, recessive.
