BOTANICAL CHARACTERISTICS. 13 



It is this very uncertainty that affords the pleasure 

 and the rarity of satisfactory results which gives value 

 to this department of grape culture. Seedling grapes 

 are from three to ten years in coming into bearing 

 usually the wildest and the most inferior varieties will 

 grow the strongest, and come into bearing first. I have 

 frequently marked two-year-old seedlings that showed 

 strong indications of their wild character, for the pur- 

 pose of ascertaining how near one could judge of the 

 worthlessness of a seedling by its leaf and growth. Some 

 of those marked produced fruit when only three years old, 

 and every one of them was as worthless in fruit as they 

 were wild in growth, although all were from improved 

 varieties. 



Occasionally a seedling will be grown that will 

 never produce fruit ; for (see botanical description) our 

 native varieties are sometimes dioecious, that 

 is, one vine produces flowers having only 

 pistils, and another only stamens. Fig. 2 

 shows a grape flower (somewhat magnified) 

 after the petals have fallen. The pistil, c, 

 FIG. 2. is in the center, while the five stamens, B, 

 surround it. If it should happen to be the former (pis- 

 tillate), then the flowers may be fertilized from the per- 

 fect flowers of another vine ; but should it 

 prove to be one of the latter, with staminate, 

 or male flowers, then it will produce no fruit. 

 Although we speak of flowers being staminate, 

 yet we have never seen, nor have we good au- 

 thority for believing, that there are any varie- FIG - 3 - 

 ties or species that are entirely wanting in the rudi- 

 ments of a pistil, though it may be so deformed that its 

 usefulness is destroyed. 



Again, there will occasionally appear seedlings with 

 both perfect and imperfect flowers on the same vine and 

 in the same cluster \ such vines are called polygamous. 



