LUTHER BURBANK 



contact with the pollen of an individual flower 

 only after it has passed the pistil, and the protect- 

 ing sheath prevents the deposit of pollen as the 

 insect or bird leaves the flower. Thus it is insured 

 that self-fertilization will not take place. 



While the flower is, as I said, complex in this 

 regard, nothing more is necessary than to study 

 its mechanism attentively, pulling to pieces two or 

 three blossoms to see just how the pollen must be 

 deposited. After that you will experience no diffi- 

 culty in cross-fertilizing the iris, and the results of 

 your work are sure to be of interest. 



FOUR-O'CLOCK AND COLUMBINE 



The familiar four-o'clocks are all natives of 

 America, but most of them had their original home 

 in the sub-tropical and tropical portions of our 

 continent. There is one, however, that is native 

 to California, and various species made their way 

 to the gardens even far to the north a century or 

 more ago, and are now grown everywhere. 



The most striking peculiarity of the four- 

 o'clocks is their tendency to combine different 

 colors in the same flower in peculiar patterns. 



We have seen a great deal of color variation 

 among flowers. We have seen numberless in- 

 stances in which blossoms of the same species may 

 be in one case red, in another pink, in a third yel- 

 low, and in a fourth white. We have seen also 



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