236 TREATISE ON FRUIT TREES. 



they close back down on the stem. When the fruit gets bigger, they're forced to yield & 

 open up, but they always stay attached to the fruit without separating from it or recurving 

 onto the pedicel. This is a common feature of this strawberry plant & of several of the 

 ones below. The number of sections varies from ten to sixteen; some of the outer ones 

 split lengthwise into two or three segments. Frequently the petals are more numerous than 

 the interior sections of the calyx. The supernumerary ones are situated in a second row in 

 front of the others. The center of the flower is occupied by a large receptacle covered by 

 many well formed pistils in good condition & capable of being fertilized. Around its base 

 attached to the calyx are more than forty stamens with extremely short filaments. Their 

 tips are atrophic & lack pollen & thus can't fertilize the pistils. So the flowers that appear 

 to be hermaphroditic are in reality only of one sex. Whether the male sexual structures 

 became impotent during the change to a new continent; whether there is no such thing as 

 a true hermaphrodite; whether no individual male plants exist; or whether the explorers to 

 whom we owe this strawberry plant only picked the plants with good-looking fruit & 

 rejected the rest as sterile, unaware that the former's fecundity depended on them, the 

 result is that in Europe we only know plants that are female or incomplete 

 hermaphrodites. 



However, fertilization through outside sources has promoted the cultivation of 

 this strawberry plant at several locations in the kingdom. It's planted with the scarlet, 

 pineapple, &c. strawberry plants & sometimes it has yielded fruit in several gardens in 

 Paris. Whether pollen from the stamens of some other strawberry plant nearby was blown 

 onto its flowers by the wind, or whether one of its own flowers may have contained 

 stamens in good condition & capable of fertilizing its pistils, what inevitably happened, 



