Mendel choose the edible pea plant to study.

Its sexual organs are enclosed by petals so the flower self-pollinates. He could buy types of true breeding peas to study.

You can cross-polinate by hand if you want to by pulling apart the petals and removing the stamens to they can't self pollinate.

Mendel studied traits (heritable characteristics) such as flower color.

He also studied one trait at a time.

He also analyized the numbers of the offspring. More >>