Proceedings of the OJiio State Academy of Science 327 



PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS. 



THE NATURE AND DEVELOPMENT OF SEX IN 

 PLANTS.* 



John H. Schaffner. 

 origin of sexuality. 



Sexuality is all but universal in the organic kingdom. It is 

 only in the lowest forms that sexual qualities are apparently 

 lacking. Some of the intermediate and higher plants also show 

 a lack of the sexual process but their morphology and relation- 

 ships clearly point to a sexual ancestr}^ They are degenerate or 

 specialized forms which have lost their sexual organs to a greater 

 or less degree. 



Now the question arises as to whether the simplest non- 

 sexual plants, like the blue-green algae and bacteria, are not also 

 such degenerate forms derived from sexual progenitors ? In 

 other words, were the primitive, original plants nonsexual in 

 character like some of the present protophyta or did they possess 

 sexual properties like the vast majority of the lower and higher 

 plants of today? Is sexuality a property of the protoplasm nor- 

 mally coming to expression at some stage of the life cycle or is 

 it an acquired character developed through mutation or the 

 struggle for existence ? There is of course no known scientific 

 answer to these questions at present. The answer can be only 

 a speculation or an hypothesis but apparentl}^ the general evi- 

 dence points to a nonsexual starting point for the organic king- 

 dom. 



Since the nonsexual condition is evidently less complex than 

 the sexual, it is probably proper to accept the hypothesis with- 



* Contribution from the Botanical Laboratory of the Ohio State 

 University, 54. 



