One day I had
to keep a third man by me all the time to prevent the bees visiting the
uncovered plants, for in a few seconds' time they might have done irreparable
mischief. It was also extremely difficult to exclude minute Diptera from the
net. In 1862 I made the great mistake of placing a mid-styled and long-styled
under the same huge net: in 1863 I avoided this error.)
Excluding the capsule with 136 seeds, 25 percent of the flowers yielded
capsules, and each capsule contained, on an average, 54.6 seeds; or, excluding
capsules with less than 20 seeds, the average is 77.5.
TABLE 4.24.6. Illegitimate union.
12 flowers fertilised by own-form shortest stamens.
0 0
0 0
0 0
- 0
0 0
0 0
0
Not one flower yielded a capsule.
Besides the experiments in Table 4.24, I fertilised a considerable number of
mid-styled flowers with pollen, taken by a camel's-hair brush, from both the
longest and shortest stamens of their own form: only 5 capsules were produced,
and these yielded on an average 11.0 seeds.
TABLE 4.25. Lythrum salicaria, short-styled form.
TABLE 4.25.1. Legitimate union.
12 flowers fertilised by the shortest stamens of the long-styled. These stamens
equal in length the pistil of the short-styled.
69 56
61 88
88 112
66 111
0 62
0 100
-
83 percent of the flowers yielded capsules.
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