CHAPTER VII 

 POLLINATION 



The essential organs of the strawberry blossom are 

 lown in Plate X. If any one of the numerous pistils 

 1 not impregnated, no seed will develop at the base of 

 lat pistil ; and if no seed, then none of the pulp near it. 

 F practically all the pistils are fertilized and the seeds 

 evelop, the berry will be large and shapely. If only 



part of the seeds develop, through lack of pollen, un- 

 ivorable weather, insect attack or other cause, the berry 

 'ill be small and misshapen. The fruit of the strawberry 

 I not a "berry" in the botanical sense, like the huckle- 

 erry or gooseberry, but is an enlarged receptacle. 



TYPES OP BLOSSOMS 



The early botanists invariably described the straw- 

 erry as bisexual, although many of the wild plants were 

 ot so. Under the stimulus of cultivation and hybridiza- 

 ion, the strawberry now shows great diversity in the 

 3xual arrangement of the blossoms. C. W. Richardson, 

 n English plant-breeder, enumerates these as follows : ^ 



"1. Females with the male organs undeveloped. 



"2. Females with most of the female organs atrophied, 

 r hypertrophied and inefficient, no male organs being 

 eveloped. 



» Jour. Genetics, 3 (1914), p. 175. 

 126 



