Also, Gärtner had focused on the wrong unit of experimentation. Mendel always considered his object of study to be the plant’s individual parts, its character traits. Gärtner, like so many of his contemporaries, was interested in the plant as a whole, which he considered the expression of all its parts. The thought of examining each part individually did not fit into his overall view. The holistic conception of inheritance, common even into the late nineteenth century, led to the widespread acceptance of