Xenia - Part I

This phenomenon is expressed in endosperm tissue.

When a homozygous CC plant is reciprocally crossed to a homozygous recessive cc plant, the kernals of both ears will have purple aleurone. The aleurone of one plant is CCc and of the other plant is Ccc. Purple aleurone is dominant to yellow. The influence of the pollen parent is expressed on the kernel for endosperm and aleurone traits. If aleurone color was due to the genotype of the maternal parent, then one ear would have all yellow aleurone and the other ear would have all purple aleurone.

CC confers purple aleurone
Cc confers purple aleurone
cc confers yellow aleurone

The dominant C allele in pollen from the CC plant results in purple aleurone color when the cc female plant was fertilized by the male CC plant. Kernels are Ccc for endosperm. The recessive c allele in pollen produced by the cc male plant does not result in yellow aleurone color when the cross is cc male x CC female. The aleurone color of all kernels will be purple, due to the dominant C allele contributed by the female parent.