PISTILLATES AND STAMINATES 31 



Though some of these exhibit a dioecious habit, as 

 a whole the Arrowheads are monoecious. Their 

 flowers grow in groups of three around a tall, cen- 

 tral stem. The lower ones, on very short pedicles, 

 are the first to bloom, and are pistillate. Above the 

 first or second group the flowers become staminate 

 and grow on longer pedicles. 



Schuyler JNIatthews says: "The pollen of the 

 Sagittaria is distributed by a variety of agents, 

 not least of which are the insects which frequent 

 wet places, among them the glossy-winged dragon- 



fly." 



Comparing for a moment the two habits of plants 

 or trees, the dioecious with the monoecious, it seems 

 to the writer that the former is less an advanced 

 stage of development than the latter. Surely, stam- 

 inate and pistillate flowers growing on separate 

 plants are farther away from the perfect flower 

 than are those which grow on the same plant. 



Though both dioecious and monoecious flowers 

 form seeds in plenty by a plan insuring cross- 

 fertilisation, they seem not fully to have satisfied 

 the desires of Dame Nature, and her next experi- 

 ment consisted in producing both pistils and 

 stamens in the same blossom, as if to see what would 

 happen under such conditions. 



I believe that pistils and stamens at first grew 



