I selected one of the finest branches with 15
fruit, and these contained 20 seeds, or on an average 1.33 per fruit. I then
took by hazard 15 fruit from an adjoining female bush, and these contained 43
seeds; that is, more than twice as many, or on an average 2.86 per fruit. Many
of the fruits from the female bushes included four seeds, and only one had a
single seed; whereas not one fruit from the polleniferous bushes contained four
seeds. Moreover when the two lots of seeds were compared, it was manifest that
those from the female bushes were the larger. The second polleniferous bush, D,
bore in 1863 about two dozen fruit,--in 1864 only 3 very poor fruit, each
containing a single seed,--and in 1865, 20 equally poor fruit. Lastly, the three
polleniferous bushes, E, F, and G, did not produce a single fruit during the
three years 1863, 1864, and 1865.
We thus see that the female bushes differ somewhat in their degree of fertility,
and the polleniferous ones in the most marked manner. We have a perfect
gradation from the female bush, B, which in 1865 was covered with "innumerable
fruits,"--through the female A, which produced during the same year 97,--through
the polleniferous bush C, which produced this year 92 fruits, these, however,
containing a very low average number of seeds of small size,--through the bush
D, which produced only 20 poor fruit,--to the three bushes, E, F, and G, which
did not this year, or during the two previous years, produce a single fruit.
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