EXPERIMENT STATION REPORT. 445- 



of the crosses from the track and upset the ordinary prolific methods 

 of propagation by seed. Out of the wreck — to continue the figure — 

 it is hoped to rescue by careful combination a form that, in time, 

 may be able to maintain itself with profit to mankind. ==' 



A STUDY OF DIMORPHISM IN BUCKWHEAT. 



Buckwheat is one of the cultivated plants that has its flowers 

 dimorphic — that is, with two lengths to the stamens and two to the 

 pistils. One plant, for example, has the pistil with long styles and 

 short stamens, and another with the three styles of the pistil short 

 and the stamens long. The plan in this is for the insect visitants to 

 carry the pollen of the long stamens of one flower and deposit it upon 

 the tips of the long styles of another flower, and the pollen of short 

 stamens to the stigmas of short- styled pistils. This is done without 

 any plan or intention on the part of the insect, for a certain portion 

 of its body will come against the long stamen and the long style, 

 while another portion touches the shorter stamen and the correspond- 

 ing pistil. This dimorphic type of blossom is generally understood 

 to be for the purpose of wide fertilization — that is, the impregnation 

 of one germ-cell with the male-cell produced by another flower. 



Assuming this view of the case, the point of the experiment was to 

 determine whether any condition of growth or previous parentage 

 had any influence in determining the particular form that the flowers 

 of any individual plant assumed. 



Seeds for the greenhouse experiments were saved from long-styled 

 and from short-styled plants, selected from a plot grown in the field 

 the previous summer. The first sowing was made in boxes one by 

 two feet square and six inches deep, on October 24th, according to 

 the following schedule : 



Box I. Seed from long-styled plants, sown in poor soil. 



Box II. Seed from short-styled plants, sown in poor soil. 



Box III. Seed from long-styled plants, sown in medium soil. 



Box IV. Seed from short-styled plants, sown in medium soil. 



Box V. Seed mixed, but from plants grown upon heavily- 

 manured soil. 



Box VI, Seed mixed, but from plants grown upon poor soil. 



*A paper upon this general subject of " Experiments with Tomatoes," given by 

 the writer before the Denver meeting of the Society for the Promotion of Agricul- 

 - tural Science, in August, contained some of the above facts 



