Gob 



GARDENING FOB THE SOUTH. 



feet; but the female, or pistillate organs, are so defective 

 that they will very rarely bear perfect fruit. Those are 

 called staminate. Second, those in which the female, or 

 pistillate organs, are perfect; but in which the male 

 organs are generally so defective that they cannot pro- 

 duce fruit at all, unless in the neighborhood of, and fer- 

 tilized by, staminate or hermaphrodite plants. Impreg- 

 nated by these, they bear enormous crops. Third, those 

 which, like the native varieties, are true hermaphrodites; 

 that is, perfect in stamens ami more or less perfect in 

 pistils, so that they generally produce a tolerable crop, 



Fig. 27S. 



Imperfect or 



Pistillate. 



Fig. 279. 

 Perfect or Bisexual. 



and, in favorable seasons, the pistils being fully de- 

 veloped, they will produce a good one. 



This is called the staminate class in some books. The 

 first of these classes, the staminate, rarely producing 

 fruit, and running exuberantly to vine, should be dug up 

 wherever found, since the hermaphrodite are productive, 

 and equally useful for fertilizing. It is to the pistillate 

 varieties, fertilized by the hermaphrodite, that we must 

 look for large crops of fruit. 



In beds of each of these varieties, seedlings will spring- 

 up, differing from the parents; but runners from any 

 variety will always produce flowers of the same class and 

 similar in all respects to the parent plant. By the due 

 admixture of hermaphrodite and pistillate plants, five 

 thousand quarts have been picked from an acre at Tin- 



