Gregor Mendel both his professors at the Palacký University, Olomouc (Friedrich Franz and Johann Karl Nestler), and his colleagues at the monastery (such as Franz Diebl) to study variation in plants. In 1854, Napp authorized Mendel to carry out a study in the monastery's experimental garden, which was originally planted by Napp in 1830. Unlike Nestler, who studied hereditary traits in sheep, Mendel used the common edible pea and started his experiments in 1856. After initial experiments with pea plants, Mendel settled on studying seven traits that seemed to be inherited independently of other traits: seed shape, flower color, seed coat tint,
Franz Unger of botany at the University of Graz and also taught at the Joanneum (which became the Universalmuseum Joanneum and the Graz University of Technology); in 1850 professor of plant physiology in Vienna. In 1852 he travelled to Northern Europe and to the Orient. Unger retired in 1866 and lived on his farm near Graz. Unger was one of the major contributors to the field of paleontology, later turning to plant physiology and phytotomy. He hypothesized that (then unknown) combinations of simple elements inside a plant cell determine plant heredity and greatly influenced the experiments of his student Gregor Johann Mendel.