The Different Forms of Flowers on Plants of the Same SpeciesDarwin, Charles
Science
The Different Forms of Flowers on Plants of the Same Species
Darwin, Charles
Fertilization of plants; Heterostylism; Plant physiology; Plants -- Variation; Pollination
This species is said by Vaucher, but I believe erroneously, to be dimorphic. I
have examined dried flowers from twenty-two separate plants from various
localities, sent to me by Mr. Hewett C. Watson, Professor Babington, and others.
These were all essentially alike, so that the species cannot be heterostyled.
The pistil varies somewhat in length, but when unusually long, the stamens are
likewise generally long; in the bud the stamens are short; and Vaucher was
perhaps thus deceived. There are from six to nine stamens, graduated in length.
The three stamens, which vary in being either present or absent, correspond with
the six shorter stamens of L. salicaria and with the six which are always absent
in L. thymifolia. The stigma is included within the calyx, and stands in the
midst of the anthers, and would generally be fertilised by them; but as the
stigma and anthers are upturned, and as, according to Vaucher, there is a
passage left in the upper side of the flower to the nectary, there can hardly be
a doubt that the flowers are visited by insects, and would occasionally be
cross-fertilised by them, as surely as the flowers of the short-styled L.
salicaria, the pistil of which and the corresponding stamens in the other two
forms closely resemble those of L. hyssopifolia. According to Vaucher and Lecoq,
this species, which is an annual, generally grows almost solitarily (4/9.
‘Geograph. Bot. de l’Europe’ tome 6 1857 page 157.), whereas the three preceding
species are social; and this fact alone would almost have convinced me that L.
hyssopifolia was not heterostyled, as such plants cannot habitually live
isolated any better than one sex of a dioecious species.
We thus see that within this genus some species are heterostyled and trimorphic;
one apparently heterostyled and dimorphic, and one homostyled.
Nesaea verticillata.
I raised a number of plants from seed sent me by Professor Asa Gray, and they
presented three forms. These differed from one another in the proportional
lengths of their organs of fructification and in all respects, in very nearly
the same way as the three forms of Lythrum Graefferi. The green pollen-grains
from the longest stamens, measured along their longer axis and not distended
with water, were 13/7000 of an inch in length; those from the mid-length stamens
9 to 10/7000, and those from the shortest stamens 8 to 9/7000 of an inch. So
that the largest pollen-grains are to the smallest in diameter as 100 to 65.
This plant inhabits swampy ground in the United States. According to Fritz
Muller, a species of this genus in St. Catharina, in Southern Brazil, is
homostyled. (4/10. ‘Botanische Zeitung’ 1868 page 112.)
Lagerstroemia Indica.
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