202 . THE PLANT WORLD. 



Of the five staminate flowers always found in a fascicle, the 

 central one, if any, generally bears the pistil. ISTot infrequently, 

 several flowers in the same fascicle are pistil-bearing and in a 

 few cases a pistil was found in each of the five flowers. If, how- 

 ever, but one flower bears a pistil it is the central one, and no 

 pistils are found in other flowers of the fascicle unless the central 

 flower is pistil-bearing. 



"Wherever a rudimentary pistil is found in a staminate 

 flower, the stamens are cenerallv reduced or are backward in 

 their development. In some cases the stamens themselves remain 

 mere dwarfed rudiments showing no filament whatever, and witli 

 the anther less than a half millimeter long. Such flowers, on the 

 other hand, sliow a rather well-developed pistil. Also, the six- 

 stamened flowers bear larger and healthier-looking anthers than 

 do flowers having a smaller number of stamens. 



The proportional number of staminate flowers bearing pis- 

 tils, either rudimentary or functional, varies greatly in different 

 trees. The first 200 staminate flowers examined, taken from 

 one tree, showed no rudimentary pistil whatever. The next tree 

 from which flowers were gathered showed an average of nearly 

 12% of all staminate flowers to have pistils. Many trees ranged 

 as high as 7% to 10%. 



All pistillate flowers were found to contain stamens, the 

 number of such stamens in a flower varying from one to five. 

 Most of these stamens were functionless, but often one, and 

 sometimes two, produced pollen. In some flowers no stamens 

 whatever were visible, but upon dissection one or more small 

 stamens could be found imbedded in the downy hairs at the base 

 of the pistil. The anthers found in ]>istillate flowers are always 

 less advanced in their development than the anthers of neighbor- 

 • ing staminate flowers; the latter being about three days' growtli 

 in advance. The very closest observation failed to reveal a single 

 case where an anther of a pistillate flower had been ruptured 

 and pollen grains liberated, until tlie pistil had grown to a con- 

 siderable size and probably had been pollinated from some stami- 

 nate flower. 



