From the condition of the pollen in the long-styled form, and
from the extreme variability of all the organs in both forms, we may perhaps
suspect that the plant is undergoing a change, and tending to become dioecious.
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.
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