The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection: Or, the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, 6th EditionDarwin, Charles
History
The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection: Or, the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, 6th Edition
Darwin, Charles
Evolution (Biology); Natural selection
When our plant, by the above process long continued, had been rendered
highly attractive to insects, they would, unintentionally on their
part, regularly carry pollen from flower to flower; and that they do
this effectually I could easily show by many striking facts. I will
give only one, as likewise illustrating one step in the separation of
the sexes of plants. Some holly-trees bear only male flowers, which
have four stamens producing a rather small quantity of pollen, and a
rudimentary pistil; other holly-trees bear only female flowers; these
have a full-sized pistil, and four stamens with shrivelled anthers, in
which not a grain of pollen can be detected. Having found a female tree
exactly sixty yards from a male tree, I put the stigmas of twenty
flowers, taken from different branches, under the microscope, and on
all, without exception, there were a few pollen-grains, and on some a
profusion. As the wind had set for several days from the female to the
male tree, the pollen could not thus have been carried. The weather had
been cold and boisterous and therefore not favourable to bees,
nevertheless every female flower which I examined had been effectually
fertilised by the bees, which had flown from tree to tree in search of
nectar. But to return to our imaginary case; as soon as the plant had
been rendered so highly attractive to insects that pollen was regularly
carried from flower to flower, another process might commence. No
naturalist doubts the advantage of what has been called the
“physiological division of labour;” hence we may believe that it would
be advantageous to a plant to produce stamens alone in one flower or on
one whole plant, and pistils alone in another flower or on another
plant. In plants under culture and placed under new conditions of life,
sometimes the male organs and sometimes the female organs become more
or less impotent; now if we suppose this to occur in ever so slight a
degree under nature, then, as pollen is already carried regularly from
flower to flower, and as a more complete separation of the sexes of our
plant would be advantageous on the principle of the division of labour,
individuals with this tendency more and more increased, would be
continually favoured or selected, until at last a complete separation
of the sexes might be effected. It would take up too much space to show
the various steps, through dimorphism and other means, by which the
separation of the sexes in plants of various kinds is apparently now in
progress; but I may add that some of the species of holly in North
America are, according to Asa Gray, in an exactly intermediate
condition, or, as he expresses it, are more or less dioeciously
polygamous.
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