STRAWBERRY. 39 



dry, hot summers, are two extremes that they cannot with- 

 stand. 



Occasionally we receive a variety which, by extra care 

 and protection in winter, will produce a large crop ; but, 

 as a whole, it is doubtful whether the Strawberry growers 

 in the United States have been permanently benefited by 

 the introduction of any of the new varieties raised from 

 the grandiflora. They may have awakened a taste for 

 more thorough experiments in Strawberry culture, and by 

 hybridizing them with our more hardy kinds produced 

 new ones of real value. 



SEXUALITY OF THE STRAWBERRY. 



Naturally the Strawberry flower possesses stamens and 

 pistils ; it is therefore perfect, as both of these organs are 

 necessary for the production of fruit. Every botanist, from 

 Linnaeus down to the present time, has described the 

 Strawberry flower as perfect or bi-sexual. 



Therefore, to assume that this is not the normal charac- 

 ter (as a few writers of late have done) is to controvert all 

 of our botanical authorities, and charge them with over- 

 looking that which the most casual observer could have 

 seen. When plants are taken from their native habitats 

 and placed under cultivation, they very often assume forms 

 ^uite different from their natural ones. Sometimes a par- 

 ticular organ is suppressed, while others are enlarged ; thus 

 we have the pistillate Strawberry and the double rose. 



Occasionally the seeds of domesticated plants are carried 

 by birds or animals to woods and fields quite distant 

 from the garden in which they are cultivated, and if per- 

 chance they are deposited under favorable conditions they 

 will produce fruit similar to that from which they ori- 

 ginated. If we find a pistillate Strawberry or double rose 

 growing wild, does it prove that these are the normal char- 

 acters of the genus ? Far from it ; but it only shows that 



