310 



Male and Female Strawberries. 



Vol. IX. 



From the Cincinnati Gazette. 

 Male and Female Strawberries. 



Messrs. Editors, — The season for the 

 blossoming of tlie strawberry is at hand, and 

 it behoves all who wish to raise this fine 

 fruit, to examine their beds, and ascertain if 

 they have both male and female plants, and 

 the proper proportion of each. There should 

 be one male to ten or twelve of the female. 

 The blossom of the male is larger and more 

 showy than the blossom of the female. I 

 have been at a loss to describe the two blos- 

 Boms to persons ignorant of botany — who 

 would not understand the terms staminate 

 and pistilate — and enable them to distin- 

 guish the difference. I was trying to do 

 this recently, when a Dutch boy was pre- 

 sent, the son of one of my tenants, who de- 

 scribed the difference so as to make it appa- 

 rent to all. "Why," said he, "you not 

 know the man from the woman ? The man 

 he have the beard, the woman have none." 

 In the female plant, the pistils, or female 

 organs only, are perceptible, and is the little 

 yellow centre, at the end of the stem, in the 

 centre of the flower. By pulling the flower 

 apart, the stamens, or male organs, will be 

 found attached to the hull, but very short 

 and defective. In the male plant, the sta- 

 mens one-third of an inch long, and like the 

 beard, cover completely what may be called 

 the face of the blossom, with yellow heads, 

 which contain the principle of itiipregnation. 

 As soon as the white leaf of the blossom 

 falls, every female blossom will show the 

 fruit, whilst in the male blossom, there will 

 generally be no fruit; and where there is 

 any, most of them small and ill-shaped. 

 The reason is, each blossom may be said not 

 to be one, but near one hundred. Each one 

 of the hundred must be impregnated to pro 

 duce a perfect fruit. The female organs 

 being covered by the stamens — beard — are 

 generally defective, and a portion only, if 

 any, are impregnated ; and I have never 

 seen a blossom produce a perfect fruit. The 

 portion impregnated swells out, the other 

 shrivels, and the berry contracts in that 

 part. The white and monthly varieties are 

 an exception. In these both organs are per 

 feet, and, as a consequence, the fruit small 

 In raising from seed generally, an equal 

 portion of male and female are produced, 

 and their runners never change their cha- 

 racter. But the male soon roots out the fe 

 male, as it increases faster, being the stronger 

 plant, and none of its energies exhausted in 

 perfecting fruit. When the people of the 

 East are not too wise to examine and under 

 stand this subject, they too will have garden^ 

 ers who will supply the market with one 



hundred and twenty bushels in a day, and 

 buy the finest of fruit at four to six cents 

 per quart, as is done in the height of their 

 seasons in our market. I am told an East- 

 ern nurseryman, who has been in tlie busi- 

 ness some forty years, pronounces the sys- 

 tem absurd. 



If the writer liad read the works of all 

 botanists who have written on the straw- 

 berry, during the life of Linnseus, and since 

 his day, he would speak with more modesty. 

 We have not an ignorant gardener, who at- 

 tends our market, who does not better un- 

 derstand this plant. The same writer says 

 the Hudson Bay strawberry is thrown by as 

 worthless. Yet this is one of the largest, 

 most productive, and of superior quality, and 

 more cultivated in our State, especially for 

 market, than any other. They are discarded 

 because the character of the plant is not 

 known. An acre of the male or female 

 plants, by themselves, would not, in one 

 hundred years, produce a single perfect 

 fruit. I will give the writer, or any other 

 nurseryman, one hundred dollars for a sin- 

 gle root of Kean's seedling, or any other 

 variety, so perfect in stamens and pistils, as 

 to produce a full crop of fruit, equal in size 

 to the discarded Hudson, or Hovey's seed- 

 ling, where not placed contiguous to male 

 plants. Few nurserymen understand the 

 subject, for a plain reason. Within a nar- 

 row space they cultivate some twenty or 

 more varieties for sale. Among so many 

 varieties they will have more or less male 

 plants, and the wind and bees carry the pol- 

 len from bed to bed. This I pointed out to 

 Mr. Buist, who set out a bed of female 

 plants, which he supposed would never fail 

 to produce a full crop, one hundred feet dis- 

 tant from all others, and subsequently wrote 

 me the}' did not produce a single perfect 

 fruit. This subject has been for the last 

 eighteen months before our Horticultural 

 Society, and the question submitted to a 

 large committee of talented botanists and 

 market gardeners. Their report will be 

 made soon afler the blossoming season. 

 Those whose past experience did not enable 

 them to give a decided opinion, after one 

 season's experiment, requested another year 

 to make up their report, intending this spring 

 to report their experiments, Mr. Hovey has 

 promised to test the matter as relates to his 

 own seedling, and I shall expect to hear 

 from him as soon as the flowering season is 

 over. I will cheerfully pay him one hun- 

 dred dollars, for a single root of his seed- 

 ling, that will, separate from all other plants, 

 yield a full crop, of usual size. It would 

 be wortli thou.sands of dollars to the United 

 States alone. N. Long worth. 



