What type of plant did Mendel famously study?

Gregor Mendel famously studied pea plants, specifically the garden pea Pisum sativum. Their clear, contrasting traits made them an excellent subject for investigating how characteristics pass from parents to offspring.

Between 1856 and 1863, Mendel cultivated and crossed thousands of pea plants in the monastery garden at St Thomas’s Abbey in Brno. He tracked traits such as plant height, seed shape, seed colour, pod form, pod colour, flower colour, and flower position.

Peas were especially useful because they can self-pollinate, yet researchers can also control their fertilisation. They mature relatively quickly and produce many offspring, allowing patterns to emerge across generations. Mendel found that some traits disappeared in one generation and reappeared later, leading to his ideas about dominant and recessive inheritance.

The plants were ordinary garden peas, not beans, corn, tomatoes, or sweet peas. Mendel presented his results in 1865, and his paper was published in 1866; its importance was widely recognised only after his work was rediscovered around 1900.