398 
FRUIT BLOSSOMS 
POLLINATION OF THE TOMATO. 
The flowers of the tomato are nectarless, 
but are visited by bees gathering pollen. 
Cross-pollination is favored by the stigmas 
maturing two or three days before the an¬ 
thers. The different varieties, as Champion, 
Ponderosa, and Peach can be easily cross¬ 
ed, but are largely self-sterile. At the Ohio 
Experiment Station, Green set out in Au¬ 
gust 200 plants of Dwarf Champion in a 
greenhouse, and by winter they had made 
a fine, thrifty growth and were fruiting 
nicely. A good crop of tomatoes was ex¬ 
pected; but when January came and the 
fruit began to ripen, the bulk of it was 
about the size of hickorynuts and without 
any seeds. Fink also states that plants 
from which insects were excluded yielded 
few and small fruits. 
In the commercial greenhouses of Ore¬ 
gon, according to the observation of Bo- 
quet, as high as 6 or 10 per cent of the 
blossoms of the tomato are unfruitful. 
The cause of this unfruitfulness is the ab¬ 
sence of insects and the relative position of 
the reproductive organs in the development 
of the flower. Hand pollination reduced 
the number of unfruitful blossoms from 
66 to 20 per cent. In one commercial 
greenhouse a block of tomato plants regu¬ 
larly pollinated produced 80 per cent of 
fruitful blossoms. Nine pounds of fruit 
per plant was secured, while unpollinated 
plants yielded only three pounds. Hand- 
pollinated flowers produced fruit as much 
as 21 days earlier than self-pollinated 
flowers. In some cases artificial pollina¬ 
tion thru the increased yield paid the en¬ 
tire cost of producing the crop. Eighty 
thousand tomato blossoms were under ob¬ 
servation. Where tomatoes are grown in 
the field the visits of honeybees in large 
numbers for the purpose of gathering pol¬ 
len would probably increase the crop to an 
extent sufficient to pay most of the cost 
of production. 
THE POLLINATION OF BERRY PLANTS. 
Grape. —It is well established that many 
kinds of grapes are self-sterile; and, since 
in this country an immense area is devoted 
to the culture of this fruit, ignorance of 
the manner of pollination of the different 
species and varieties must result in great 
Joss. Some 40 species of grapes have been 
described, of which about 20 occur in North 
America. They are widely distributed thru- 
out the north temperate zone, but are espe¬ 
cially abundant in the region of the Cauca¬ 
sus and in the eastern United States. There 
are now under cultivation some 16 species, 
1194 varieties, of which 790, or three- 
fourths, are hybrids. Foreign grapes do 
pot succeed well in this country when 
planted outdoors, but grow satisfactorily 
in hothouses. Grape-growing on a com¬ 
mercial scale in America takes its begin¬ 
ning in 1849, when Nicholas Longworth of 
Cincinnati, after 30 years of experiment 
with foreign grapes, turned his attention 
to our nature species and planted extensive¬ 
ly the Catawba, a variety of the common 
wild Vitis labrusca. 
The flowers of the vine are small and 
green and occur in dense thyrsoid clusters. 
The calyx is minute, and the five petals 
cohere to form a little hood, which falls 
away entire when the flower opens. The 
five stamens produce only a small quantity 
of pollen; alternating with the stamens are 
five nectar glands. The flowers are very 
sweet-scented with an odor suggestive of 
mignonette, which can be perceived for a 
long distance. A part of the plants pro¬ 
duce perfect or hermaphrodite* flowers 
and a part staminate flowers with a rudi¬ 
mentary ovary. 
Many varieties of American grapes are 
self-sterile. Of 169 cultivated varieties in¬ 
vestigated by Beach at Geneva, N. Y., 37 
were wholly self-sterile, and in the absence 
of cross-pollination produced no berries; 
28 were so nearly self-sterile that the clus¬ 
ters were unmarketable, and thus from a 
commercial point of view of no more value 
than the previous group; 104 varieties pro¬ 
duced marketable clusters when self-fertil¬ 
ized, but of this number 66 had the clusters 
loose, and only 38 yielded compact perfect 
clusters. Among the varieties wholly ster¬ 
ile were Aminia, Black Eagle, Essex, Onei¬ 
da, Eaton, Salem, and Wilder; nearly 
sterile varieties were Brighton, Canada, 
Geneva, Vergennes, and Woodruff; wholly 
or nearly self-fertile varieties were Delan- 
son, Moore’s Early, Niagara, Worden, 
Agawam, Catawba, Champion, Clinton. 
Concord, Isabella, and Victoria. The self- 
* See pollination of Flowers for a definition 
of these terms, 
