If you can screw out time, do look at the stigma of the blue
Leschenaultia biloba. I have just examined a large bud with the indusium
not yet closed, and it seems to me certain that there is no stigma
within. The case would be very important for me, and I do not like to
trust solely to myself. I have been impregnating flowers, but it is
rather difficult...
I have just looked again at Viola canina. The case is odder: only 2
stamens which embrace the stigma have pollen; the 3 other stamens have
no anther-cells and no pollen. These 2 fertile anthers are of different
shape from the 3 sterile others, and the scale representing the
lower lip is larger and differently shaped from the 4 other scales
representing 4 other petals.
In V. odorata (single flower) all five stamens produce pollen. But I
daresay all this is known.
LETTER 592. TO J.D. HOOKER. November 3rd [1862].
Do you remember the scarlet Leschenaultia formosa with the sticky margin
outside the indusium? Well, this is the stigma--at least, I find the
pollen-tubes here penetrate and nowhere else. What a joke it would be if
the stigma is always exterior, and this by far the greatest difficulty
in my crossing notions should turn out a case eminently requiring insect
aid, and consequently almost inevitably ensuring crossing. By the
way, have you any other Goodeniaceae which you could lend me, besides
Leschenaultia and Scaevola, of which I have seen enough?
I had a long letter the other day from Crocker of Chichester; he has the
real spirit of an experimentalist, but has not done much this summer.
LETTER 593. TO F. MULLER. Down, April 9th and 15th [1866].
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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