114 AMERICAN CARNATION CULTURE. 



The carnation belongs to the "Monoecian" class of plants. 

 Male and female cells exist and are associated in the same plant, 

 and circulate in its common blood. The fact of distinct male and 

 female organs in the flower of the same plant proves that bisex- 

 ual cells conjointly exist as distinct entities in the same plant's or- 

 ganism. Otherwise it could not fertilize its own seed. If bisexual 

 cells do not jointly and harmoniously circulate in the plasm of a 

 carnation plant it could not vitilize its own seed, and both the 

 stamens or pistils in its flowers are useless organs. Carnations 

 blow what botanists call "a perfect flower," meaning a flower 

 capable of fructifying itself and continuing its species independent- 

 ly. Conclusions are so palpable that male and female cells flow in 

 the blood of a carnation plant and polarize their forces in the stamens 

 and pistils during the period of fecundation, that they are the 

 synonyms of facts. 



The importance of this physiological fact consists in its being 

 denied, and in its acceptance being the basis of the only rational 

 theory of bud variations that can ever be adduced. 



ORIGIN OF BUD VARIATION. 



New life comes from the conjugation of vital forces of male 

 and female cells in the ovary of the plant. Necessarily there is 

 some confusion in a plant's circulation at the axis of a leaf about 

 to break into a bud, the walls of bisexual cells are ruptured and 

 they mix and mingle with life as it breaks into a bud which gives 

 this lateral branch a different character from the parent plant. The 

 color of the flower and habit of the branch are as unlike the parent 

 plant from which it grew as if it had been fertilized in the ovary by 

 the ordinary method of poUenization. This strange new branch is 

 called a ''spoi /" or ''bud variation:' The difierence between a sport 

 and a seedling is bisexual cells by accident mixed and mingled in 

 the germ of a bud, instead of an embryonic germ in the ovary. 

 Chester Pride, Edelweiss, H. Stanley, Starlight, Armazindy, Ore- 

 gon, and more than twenty- five other sports have been named, 

 disseminated and wore even honors with seedlings. Sports never 

 occur in plants that bear exclusively male or female flowers, be- 



