190 LUTHER BURBANK 



There is no difficulty in effecting cross-ferti- 

 lization, provided, of course, the two species 

 bloom at the same time. Pollen from the ripe 

 male plant is simply dusted over the pistillate 

 flower. The female plant is the one that is useful 

 for ornament, the male plant having a smaller 

 and coarser plume, which is never silky or fluffy, 

 and which readily falls to pieces under any 

 treatment. 



There are pampas grasses, however, that have 

 both staminate and pistillate flowers in the same 

 blossom, and, of course, these cannot be cross- 

 fertilized with such facility. 



My most interesting experiments have had to 

 do with the crossing of a pink variety of pampas 

 grass that bears both staminate and pistillate 

 flowers, with some of our finest large white varie- 

 ties. These plants crossed readily and many 

 thousand seedlings were raised. A large pro- 

 portion of the seedlings were plants bearing both 

 stamens and pistils like the pink parent. Very 

 few were female plants, and therefore bearers of 

 good plumes. 



Even when the plumes were produced, they 

 were usually not as large as those of the white 

 parent, and many of them were smaller even 

 than the small plume of the pink parent. This 

 is easily accounted for by the fact that the great 



