UNUSUAL FORMS IN PLANTS. 



375 



The influence of moisture, heat, and light is very great upon 

 vegetation, and one only needs to observe the same species of plant 

 as grown in a moist, shady place, as compared with the ones that 

 are located in the full sun where the soil is dry. Size and shape of 

 parts, and even their color and the surface, are different, and this 

 all leads us up to the cultivated plants where variation is the rule 

 and constancy the exception. 



Among wild plants where similar surroundings obtain for all 

 members of the species the albino is noted, and any replacement of 

 stamens by petals, as in the wild buttercup, is the rare exception. 

 But the cultivated plants have led a charmed life, and we scarcely 

 wonder that the plants in the bed of sweet peas or gladiolus, canna 

 or dahlia, are as diverse in form and color as the pieces in a crazy- 

 bedquilt. Man, with all his ingenuity and skill, has been at work 

 molding the plant clay made plastic by generations of special cul- 

 ture. 



In one sense the greenhouse, the garden, orchard, and even the 

 cultivated field are all dealing with monstrosities. The well-filled 

 horticultural hall at a State or county fair is a vast collection of 

 unnatural curiosities — that is, they do not occur in Kature, but are 

 truly the creations of the 

 mind of man as worked out 

 along lines of vegetable 

 physiology and stimulated 

 plant production. For din- 

 ner this very day the writer 

 ate a slice of a modern wa- 

 termelon. What a triumph 

 of horticultural art was ex- 

 hibited in that giant fruit, 

 each seed of which was filled 

 with the accumulated ten- 

 dencies of a generation of 

 high breeding! There was 

 represented the infiuence of 

 soil and selection, of crossing 

 and of culture, until the wild 

 melon, which none of us sees 

 or cares to see, is gone and 

 a special creation takes its 

 place, with its great de- 

 mands upon any one who would attempt to grow it to perfection. 



The art of breeding might " possibly have deprived it of seeds 

 had there been some other convenient method for propagation, as is 



Fig. 3. — A Twin-Flowered Cypripedium 

 AcAULE (Ait.). 



