Albinism despite its lack of chlorophyll it may grow to substantial size as a parasite, usually on the base of the (normal) redwood tree from which it first grew. Only about sixty examples of albino redwoods are known. Additionally, an even smaller number of "chimeric" redwood trees have both normal and white needles. Albinism has frequently occurred in progeny of Black Tartarian, Bing and Hedelfingen varieties of sweet cherry. The Albino Squirrel Preservation Society was founded at the University of Texas at Austin in 2001. Members of the society at the University of North Texas petitioned for an election to name
Varieties of Chinese their own standard languages. In China, however, Literary Chinese maintained its monopoly on formal writing until the start of the 20th century. The logographic writing, read with varying local pronunciations, continued to serve as a source of vocabulary and idioms for the local varieties. The new national standard, Vernacular Chinese, the written counterpart of spoken Standard Chinese, is also used as a literary form by speakers of all varieties. Dialectologist Jerry Norman estimated that there are hundreds of mutually unintelligible varieties of Chinese. These varieties form a dialect continuum, in which differences in speech generally become more pronounced as distances