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THE GARDENERS' MONTHLY 



[April, 



CLOSE UNION OF DIFFERENT SPECIES OF 



TREES. 



BY DR. CHAS. W. GREENE. 



Your recent notices of the apparent union of 

 trees of two widely different species recall the fact 

 noted by Seemann in his " History of the Palms" 

 (p. 105), that in India and Ceylon it is very com- 

 mon to see the trunk of a Banyan, or other Ficus. 

 from which there shoots out a Palmyra palm. It 

 is almost certain that the Ficus starts as an epiphyte 

 upon the Palmyra, and sends down its tendrils to 

 take root in the soil. In South Florida the same 

 thing happens with a native Ficus, the seeds of 

 which take root at first upon the bark of some 

 other tree, precisely as the Banyan takes root upon 

 the crown of the Palmyra. The Hindoos look 

 with great reverence upon this apparent union of 

 two trees of diverse habit. 



I have occasionally in New England found a 

 currant bush growing in the fork of some great 

 chestnut or other tree, where dirt and decaying 

 bark afforded it a slender subsistence. One occa- 

 sionally finds a weed or brier growing in a decayed 

 knot on the trunk of a tree. Merchantville, N. J. 



EDITORIAL NOTES. 



Weakened Vital Power Through Continu- 

 ous Forcing. — Mr. Charles Henderson makes a 

 good point in his essay on the carnation disease. 

 We all know how it was with the grape a quarter 

 of a century ago, when by the forcing process 

 grape vines were tossed into the market by the 

 million, with the result that nothing but the Con- 

 cord became " hardy enough," and scarcely that 

 one. Grape culture received a set back from 

 these weak vines that took many years to recover 

 from. 



Immediate Influence OF Pollen on Fruit. 

 — At a recent meeting of the Academy of Natural 

 Sciences, Mr. Thomas Meehan directed attention 

 to an ear of Indian corn on the table, sent by Mr. 

 Burnett Landreth, which had nearly all one side 

 with brownish-red grain, the other side creamy 

 white, which was the normal color of the variety. 

 Usually the intermixture of colors which occasion- 

 ally occurred in an ear of corn, is attributed to cross- 

 fertilization. It is apparent that this could not be 

 the case in this instance. The whole solid block 

 is colored, and, at the edge of the colored mass, 

 only half a grain would be colored in some in- 

 stances. The coloring influence had evidently 



spread from some central point quite independent 

 of any single grain, and had spread from grain to 

 grain through the receptacle, until the coloring 

 material was exhausted. In cross-fertilization, 

 from the entangled position of the silk-like pistils> 

 no such regularity of coloring in adjoining grains 

 could occur. On reflection we may understand 

 that at times color in corn must come from causes 

 independent of cross-fertilization, as the departure 

 in the first instance from one color, must be from 

 an innate power to vary in color, independently 

 of any pollenating influence. 



The facts are interesting, as bearing on many 

 topics as yet not wholly solved. Much has been 

 said about the changes in nature being by slow 

 modifications through long ages, but we have fre- 

 quent instances of sudden leaps. There are no 

 gradations between the colors of these grains. 

 Again, -it is in dispute how far cross-fertilization 

 influences the seed. Generally no immediate in- 

 fluence is conceded, we have to wait till the seed 

 grows, and we can examine the new plant to as- 

 certain the potency of the several parents. So far 

 corn has been the chief and almost the only evi- 

 dence that the seed or its surroundings are imme- 

 diately affected ; but recently statements have 

 been made that the receptacle in the strawberry — 

 what we know in everyday life as the strawberry 

 — is similarly influenced. There are some varie- 

 ties wholly pistillate, and it is claimed that when 

 pollen is applied from other varieties, the resultant 

 fruit is that of the male parent. It is of great 

 practical importance that such a question should 

 be decided by undoubted facts. Experience in 

 other directions does not confirm these views. 

 The Mitchella repens is really a dioecious plant. 

 Many years ago he found one plant with white 

 berries, and removed some portion to his own 

 grounds, where, isolated from others, it produces 

 no fruit. In its native location it bears white ber- 

 ries freely, though the pollen is from the original 

 scarlet berried forms. Mr. Jackson Dawson had 

 given him a similar case on Prof Sargent's grounds, 

 where a white berried Prinos verticillatus is pro- 

 duced, though it must have pollen from the origi- 

 nal red berried form. Other illustrations were re- 

 ferred to. 



To those who looked for regularity of rule in 

 these cases, and in the light of the specimen of 

 corn before the meeting, there might be a doubt 

 whether the variation in corn often attributed to 

 cross-fertilization, may not after all have resulted 

 from an innate power to vary. It did not really 

 follow that the rule should be uniform, for those 



