THE FLOWER 47 



75. Sex in hardy fruits. — Technica%, the words "male" and 

 ''female" as applied to plants are now used by botanists in a 

 very restricted and specialized sense. Thus, a stamen is not 

 said to be a male organ nor a pistil a female organ. These re- 

 finements, necessary enough in some phases of botany, cannot 

 be adopted without unduly burdening pomology with a strictly 

 botanical conception and terminolog}^ Therefore, the old and 

 common conception and language of sex relations in plants is 

 probably best for pomologists. 



When stamens and pistils are present in the same flower, as 

 in all hardy fruits excepting some varieties of grapes and straw- 

 berries, the flowers are perfect, hermaphrodite, or 'bisexual. In 

 some flowers, as in many varieties of grapes and strawberries 

 among fruits, one or another of the essential organs are missing 

 or do not function ; such flowers are imperfect or unisexual. 

 Flowers in which the stamens alone are present are staminate or 

 male; those in which only pistils are represented are pistillate 

 or female. AVhen staminate and pistillate flowers are borne on 

 different plants, the species is dioecious; when the two kinds of 

 flowers are on the same plant, monoecious. When a plant, as 

 the grape, has some perfect and some imperfect flowers, it is 

 polygamous. 



76. Pollination and fertilization. — The transfer of pollen 

 from the anther of the stamen to the stigma of the pistil is 

 pollination. The fusion of the contents of the pollen-cell with 

 the ovum, the generative cell in the ovary, is fertilization. When 

 the pollen comes from the anther of the flower bearing the ovum, 

 the flower is self -pollinated; if followed by fertilization, the 

 plant is self- or close-fertilized; the first term is often shortened 

 to selfed. With many plants the pollen may or must come from 

 another individual in which case the flower is cross-pollinated, 

 and if fertilization results the plant is cross-fertilized or crossed. 



There is no intention of discussing physiological processes in 

 this text, but the effects of fertilization, which may change the 

 appearance of the resulting fruits if abnormal, can be shown 

 best by a recapitulation of the physiological process of fertiliza- 

 tion. The stimulus of fertilization animates growth in the ovule 

 and the ovary-wall, to the end that the ovules develop into seeds 

 and the ovary into a fruit. In some cases, and these are of 



