CHAPTER IV 



THE SEED AND ITS FERTILIZATION 



THOSE who have debated the old vexed question Which 

 came first: the hen or the egg? will admit that if one 

 wishes to produce a Hevea tree, the seed is the first necessity. 

 The seed, however, presupposes a parent plant, and, it may 

 be said, a father and a mother. The Hevea tree, as all planters 

 are aware, bears flowers, and in these flowers are to be found 

 the fathers and the mothers of the seed that are to be. The 

 flowers, which are white, with a fine-lobed calyx or cup, are 

 found at the tips of the branches in small bunches. The male 

 and female flowers are found together in each of these bunches. 

 In the male flower, the stamens which are in reality leaves 

 reduced generally to filaments which bear, in lobes at the end, 

 the pollen-grains, the male element of the plant unite in the 

 centre, forming one column. In the female flower each ovule 

 is divided into thin-walled cells, and surrounded by them is the 

 ovum, the female element. 



Fertilization in the case of the Hevea is by means of wind- 

 borne pollen, that is to say, by a form of cross-fertilization. Few 

 of the higher members of the vegetable kingdom are self- 

 fertilized. It is a general law of Nature that vigorous growth 

 and healthy life can only be secured when cross-fertilization 

 has taken place. All planters know how, when the Heveas 

 are in flower, the whole air is full of the scent from the pollen 

 which fills the air in the neighbourhood of the trees. In this 

 way cross-fertilization is secured, the pollen from one tree being 

 wafted to others. 



When the ovule has undergone certain changes as the result 

 of fertilization, it becomes a seed, and, granted favourable con- 

 ditions, will germinate and produce a plant. The young plant 

 will not be produced from the whole seed, but only from a part 



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