Mendelian inheritance inheritance were named for and first derived by Gregor Johann Mendel, a nineteenth-century Moravian monk who formulated his ideas after conducting simple hybridisation experiments with pea plants ("Pisum sativum") he had planted in the garden of his monastery. Between 1856 and 1863, Mendel cultivated and tested some 5,000 pea plants. From these experiments, he induced two generalizations which later became known as "Mendel's Principles of Heredity" or "Mendelian inheritance". He described these principles in a two-part paper, "Versuche über Pflanzen-Hybriden" ("Experiments on Plant Hybridization"), that he read to the Natural History Society of Brno on 8 February and 8 March
Plant genetics traits by way of discrete "units of inheritance". This term, still used today, is a somewhat ambiguous definition of what is referred to as a gene. Much of Mendel's work with plants still forms the basis for modern plant genetics. Plants, like all known organisms, use DNA to pass on their traits. Animal genetics often focuses on parentage and lineage, but this can sometimes be difficult in plant genetics due to the fact that plants can, unlike most animals, can self-fertilize. Speciation can be easier in many plants due to unique genetic abilities, such as being well adapted to polyploidy.