As thirty-seven plants were raised from these two unions, we may, with much
confidence, believe that it is the rule that plants thus derived usually consist
of both parent-forms, but not of the third form. When, however, the mid-styled
form was illegitimately fertilised by the longest stamens of the short-styled
(Class 7), the same rule did not hold good; for the seedlings consisted of all
three forms. The illegitimate union from which these latter seedlings were
raised is, as previously stated, singularly fertile, and the seedlings
themselves exhibited no signs of sterility and grew to their full height. From
the consideration of these several facts, and from analogous ones to be given
under Oxalis, it seems probable that in a state of nature the pistil of each
form usually receives, through the agency of insects, pollen from the stamens of
corresponding height from both the other forms. But the case last given shows
that the application of two kinds of pollen is not indispensable for the
production of all three forms. Hildebrand has suggested that the cause of all
three forms being regularly and naturally reproduced, may be that some of the
flowers are fertilised with one kind of pollen, and others on the same plant
with the other kind of pollen. Finally, of the three forms, the long-styled
evinces somewhat the strongest tendency to reappear amongst the offspring,
whether both, or one, or neither of the parents are long-styled.
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