124 CULTURE OF THE STRAWBERRF. 



product is owing to a better development of the pistils in favorable sea- 

 sons. The famous Keen's Seedling, and other prized English varieties, 

 are of this character, for it is not till recently, that they have under- 

 stood the true character of the plant, but have adhered to the opinion 

 of Linnaeus, that all varieties have both organs perfect, and a failure 

 to bear fruit, they attribute to the effect of frost. The last rare variety 

 is a plant that has, with staminate and Hermaphrodite blossoms, or 

 Hermaphrodite blossoms only, a portion purely pistillate. Hermaph- 

 rodites, and staminates, to a casual observer, present the same appear- 

 ance. Where there are no insects, even Hermaphrodite blossoms require 

 impregnation by hand. It is even said, that some kinds of plants, if 

 not all, require particular kinds of insects to perform the impregna- 

 tion ; that some plants, strangers to our climate, require impregnation 

 by hand, as we did not, with the plant, import the insect designed to 

 perform the labor of impregnation. Of the truth of this, I have no 

 knowledge, never having had my attention drawn to it. I believe one 

 staminate, or Hermaphrodite plant, will impregnate twenty or more 

 pistillates. Both require watching. If you plant but one staminate to 

 twenty pistillates, the staminate will, in two years, take entire posses- 

 sion and root out the pistillates. They are the most vigorous, and hav- 

 ing no fruit to exhaust them, make ten new plants, where the pistillates 

 form one. 



That Hermaphrodites require impregnation by insects, or by hand, 

 I ascertained last season and this. In my grape-house, I had, last 

 spring, a large number of pistillates and Hermaphrodites in pots. 

 When in blossom, no insects were stirring, and neither bore fruit. In 

 the garden, when the plants were in blossom, it was cold, and an in- 

 sect was rarely seen, except on the south side of a high garden wall. 

 There my blossoms were fully impregnated, for there insects congrega- 

 ted. I had a large number of beds of plants, commencing twenty feet 

 south of the wall. There, not one- blossom in fifty of pistillates or 

 Hermaphrodites, had a perfect fruit. This season, in ray grape-house, 

 I impregnated both kinds by hand, with a brush, and now have all 

 fully impregnated, and fruit nearly ripe. I learn from my gardener, 

 recently from England, that they now, in forcing their Strawberries, also 

 impregnate with a brush. To shake the pot daily would produce the 

 same effect, and I presume, more perfectly. 



I would recommend to plant three beds of pistillates, then a single 

 row of Hermaphrodites, followed by six or eight beds of pistillates, 

 and so continue to the end of the patch. I should cut off the runners 

 in the single rows, and not allow them to increase. A stamiuate Seed- 

 ling may come up in a bed of pistillates. and root most of them out of 



