CHAPTER VII 



POLLINATION 



The essential organs of the strawberry blossom are 

 shown in Plate X. If any one of the numerous pistils 

 is not impregnated, no seed will develop at the base of 

 that pistil ; and if no seed, then none of the pulp near it. 

 If practically all the pistils are fertilized and the seeds 

 develop, the berry will be large and shapely. If only 

 a part of the seeds develop, through lack of pollen, un- 

 favorable weather, insect attack or other cause, the berry 

 will be small and misshapen. The fruit of the strawberry 

 is not a "berry" in the botanical sense, like the huckle- 

 berry or gooseberry, but is an enlarged receptacle. 



TYPES OF BLOSSOMS 



The early botanists invariably described the straw- 

 berry as bisexual, although many of the wild plants were 

 not so. Under the stimulus of cultivation and hybridiza- 

 tion, the strawberry now shows great diversity in the 

 sexual arrangement of the blossoms. C. W. Richardson, 

 an English plant-breeder, enumerates these as follows : ^ 



"1. Females with the male organs undeveloped. 



"2. Females with most of the female organs atrophied, 

 or hypertrophied and inefficient, no male organs being 

 developed. 



1 Jour. Genetics, 3 (1914), p. 176. 

 126 



