Another plant growing in the Botanic Gardens at Calcutta, as Mr. J.
Scott informs me, was long-styled, and it was equally sterile with its own
pollen; whilst a long-styled plant of L. reginae, though growing by itself,
produced fruit. I examined dried flowers from two plants of L. parviflora, both
of which were long-styled, and they differed from L. Indica in having eight long
stamens with thick filaments, and a crowd of shorter stamens. Thus the evidence
whether L. Indica is heterostyled is curiously conflicting: the unequal number
of the short and long stamens, their extreme variability, and especially the
fact of their pollen-grains not differing in size, are strongly opposed to this
belief; on the other hand, the difference in length of the pistils in two of the
plants, their sterility with their own pollen, and the difference in length and
structure of the two sets of stamens in the same flower, and in the colour of
their pollen, favour the belief. We know that when plants of any kind revert to
a former condition, they are apt to be highly variable, and the two halves of
the same organ sometimes differ much, as in the case of the above-described
anther of the Lagerstroemia; we may therefore suspect that this species was once
heterostyled, and that it still retains traces of its former state, together
with a tendency to revert more completely to it.
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