I've returned. Under my blankets and pillows. Judging by the stuffiness of this hiding spot, I dont have much oxygen to spare. So I'll make this quick.

Where was I.

AH Punett squares, yes.

The parents, as you may recall, were tall and short. Say you have an offspring recipe, and in order to make it you need two parts tall and two parts short. These "parts" are what we call alleles, the parts of a gene, which are given by the parents of the offspring.

With Punnet squares, this arangement of alleles would look like this, where tall is represented by a T and short is represented by a t:

Tall Plant: TT
Short Plant: tt

The tall plant in this case is dominant, or greater than the short plant, because it has two T's that will mask the other t's. The short plant is recessive, or less than the taller one.

In this case, the punett square would look like this:

   T    T
t  Tt   Tt 
t  Tt   Tt

Now, all the alleles are arranged into new genes: Tt, the genotype (the genetic makeup of the offspring).

But what does that mean? We couldn't possibly have a mixing of  alleles, BOTH traits would appear!

Not necessarily. While it is possible in some cases (stay tuned) it isn't in this case.

Because the T is still dominant and will mask the t, the T or tall trait will appear. This is why in Mendel's first generation, ALL the plants appeared as tall, or the phenotype (the trait that actually appears).

Well, now I'm absolutely exhausted. I'll tell of the F2 generation tomorrow.