230 REMARKS ON SOME DIOICIOUS PLANTS. 
apart from contact with the pollen of the male, a fertilizing influence has 
been at work in some form or manner. I think an exaggerated importance 
is attached to the functions of various organs. For instance, although 
anthers generally bear the pollen, under certain conditions other organs 
will produce pollen. Instances of this are on record. I have near me 
a drawing, copied by myself from nature, showing the pistil bearing an 
anther as well as a stigma (in “ Crocus vernus”); on the end of this 
anther again is another small stigmatic surface. It is also well known 
that petals occasionally bear anthers, generally situated in their thickest 
part, as in Nymphea alba, and in the double forms of the garden Poppy. 
I have frequently seen the middle of the petal of a double Poppy open 
and discharge pollen, showing the close affinity of all the organs of the 
ower. Instead then of jumping to the conclusion that a female flower 
is able to fertilize itself without pollen, it^ would be well, in all dioicious 
flowers, to see if the pistil or petals are ever capable of producing or do 
produce pollen ; or if abortive forms of the stamens occur, that on occa- 
sion may produce pollen so as to fertilize the ovules when the male 
flowers are absent. 
In my mind it is an open question as to whether a female flower cannot 
be fertilized without the direct influence of true pollen. If anything 
will do this, I am inclined to think it is the nectar found at the base of 
the petal; this is probably the nearest ally to the true pollen, and in 
some Ranunculacee I have observed the nectary bearing pollen in the 
place of nectar. In some female flowers that bear this nectar-like 
secretion, is it not probable that on certain occasions the nectary may 
play the part of the anther of the male? Or may not pollen be at times 
produced from a petal on its hastening forward to the next stage of 
flower growth, a stamen ? 
It has been stated rather positively that the female flowers of Bryonia 
and other plants have no traces of stamens or anthers. M. Naudin, 
of Paris, in his valuable and highly interesting paper ** On the Forma- 
tion of Seeds without Pollen” (* Comptes Rendus,’ 1856, p. 538, and 
republished by Dr. Seemann in * Hooker's Journal of Botany and Kew 
Miscellany ’ for 1857, ix. p. 53), has the following passage :— 
t In 1854, I observed in ground close to a wali and palisades, belonging to 
the Museum, a female plant of the common Bryony (Bryonia dioica), quite 
alone in this ground, and which, from thousands of flowers which it had pro- 
duced, had set and ripened fruit in very great numbers, but in a proportion in- 
