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
My son collected in the Isle of Wight on two occasions 202 plants, of which 125
were long-styled and 77 short-styled; so that the former were the more numerous.
On the other hand, out of 18 plants raised by me from seed, only 4 were long-
styled and 14 short-styled. The short-styled plants seemed to my son to produce
a greater number of flowers than the long-styled; and he came to this conclusion
before a similar statement had been published by Hildebrand with respect to P.
officinalis. My son gathered ten branches from ten different plants of both
forms, and found the number of flowers of the two forms to be as 100 to 89, 190
being short-styled and 169 long-styled. With P. officinalis the difference,
according to Hildebrand, is even greater, namely, as 100 flowers for the short-
styled to 77 for the long-styled plants. Table 3.20 shows the results of my
experiments.
We see in Table 3.20 that the fertility of the two legitimate unions to that of
the two illegitimate together is as 100 to 35, judged by the proportion of
flowers which produced fruit; and as 100 to 32, judged by the average number of
seeds per fruit. But the small number of fruit yielded by the 18 long-styled
flowers in the first line was probably accidental, and if so, the difference in
the proportion of legitimately and illegitimately fertilised flowers which yield
fruit is really greater than that represented by the ratio of 100 to 35. The 18
long-styled flowers illegitimately fertilised yielded no seeds,--not even a
vestige of one. Two long-styled plants which were placed under a net produced
138 flowers, besides those which were artificially fertilised, and none of these
set any fruit; nor did some plants of the same form which were protected during
the next summer. Two other long-styled plants were left uncovered (all the
short-styled plants having been previously covered up), and humble-bees, which
had their foreheads white with pollen, incessantly visited the flowers, so that
their stigmas must have received an abundance of pollen, yet these flowers did
not produce a single fruit. We may therefore conclude that the long-styled
plants are absolutely barren with their own-form pollen, though brought from a
distinct plant. In this respect they differ greatly from the long-styled English
plants of P. officinalis which were found by me to be moderately self-fertile;
but they agree in their behaviour with the German plants of P. officinalis
experimented on by Hildebrand.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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