436 
The Hop. 
THE HOP— ITS CULTIVATION, &c. 
The hop {Humvlus Iwpulus) is a dioeceas plant, (o) that is, 
some of the individuals are male plants, and others female, which 
have respectively flowers of a dif- 
ferent construction and of different 
habitudes. The male or stamini- 
ferous flowers, (a) which grow on 
stalks quite distinct from the female 
flowers, prepare the pollen, or fer- 
tilizing dust, and afterwards wither 
away, when this dust has escaped 
from the anthers, and been com- 
mitted to the air, to be by it con- 
veyed to the female flowers. The 
female flowers are in the form of 
strobuli, {h) or cones, consisting 
of scales, which have at their base 
the germ of the future seed, which Humuius Lupulus.— Fig. 30 
have the habit of enlarging as the scales of the fir-cones do, more 
particularly after the fertilization of the ovul, or future seed, by a 
quantity of the pollen falling upon it. 
Though the pollen, from its extreme lightness, can be wafted 
to a considerable distance, and some seeds in each cone may be so 
fertilized, yet it would be well to rear a number of the male plants 
among the others, or along the edges of the hop fields, to insure 
the fertilization of all the seeds. But as the farmers observe that 
the flowers of the male (termed by some the wild hop,) wither 
away, they generally extirpate them at the digging season, as 
unfruitful, cumberers of the ground. That this is an error, may be 
proved in various ways, but an appeal to the result of an oppo- 
site practice is the most convincing. A bushel of hops, collected 
from plants of the fourth year, raised from seed, weighed 36 lbs., 
there being male plants near; a second instance, when the plants 
were raised from cuttings, weighed 35 lbs., while a bushel grown 
in a garden where the male plants were always eradicated 
weighed only 22 lbs. Besides the greater quantity of hops thus 
obtained, the aroma is much greater, and the strength of the bitter 
much greater. The value of a specimen of hops depends upon the 
amount of lupulin dust it contains; when of the best quality, they 
command from sixteen to twenty cents the pound. After the pe- 
riod when the males have elaborated the pollen, and the strobuli 
of the females begin to enlarge, the males may be cut down and 
the stalks employed to make cordage for hop-bags against the fol- 
lowing harvest. 
