20 EXPERIMENTS WITH MUSKMELONS 



Nicholson's Dictionary of Gardening, "The flowers are monoe- 

 cious and are produced in the axis of the leaf stock, the males 

 being far the most numerous of the two sexes"; Bailey's For- 

 cing Book, "Melons are monoecious, that is, the sexes are borne 

 in separate flowers on the same plant; the first flowers to open 

 are always males or staminate and it may be two weeks after 

 these blossoms appear that the females or pistillate begin to 

 form." 



In order to determine whether the pollen from these 

 staminate flowers is fertile or prepotent, many flowers were 

 covered just previous to opening and then pollinated with 

 their own pollen, artificially, omitting some to see if they were 

 capable of self-fertilization. "We were successful in setting the 

 fruit through the artificial means, although out of twenty-four 

 blossoms covered but not hand pollinated no fruit set. This 

 work has been carried on now for two seasons, and the present 

 season fruit has been produced from the seed taken from the 

 fruit which was fertilized with pollen produced in the so-called 

 pistillate flower. To what extent the pollen of the pistillate 

 flower is effective upon the •fruit itself I am not prepared to 

 state, but a close examination of the pistillate flower and the 

 method of insect visitation leads me to think that the pistil, 

 which is tri-lobed, is more easily self-fertile than otherwise. 

 Further investigation is needed to determine various points. 

 That the muskmelon is monoecious, however, needs some quali- 

 fications, and especially where the practical bearing comes is 

 that the horticulturist in crossing these fruits should remem- 

 ber that the majority of our cultivated varieties, and practi- 

 cally all of the smaller sized varieties, contain perfect flowers. 



EXPEEIMEXT NO. II 



PICKING TIME 



There seems to be no general rule for the best time to pick 

 muskmelons equally applicable to all varieties. To allow them 

 to ripen or turn yellow upon the vines usually results in a loss 



