The seeds were carefully collected from
the eleven female plants, and they weighed 98.7 grains; and those from the seven
hermaphrodites 36.5 grains. This gives for an equal number of plants the ratio
of 100 to 58; and we here see, as in the last case, how much more fertile the
females are than the hermaphrodites. These two lots of seeds were sown
separately in two adjoining beds, and the seedlings from both the hermaphrodite
and female parent-plants consisted of both forms.
Satureia hortensis.
Eleven seedlings were raised in separate pots in a hotbed and afterwards kept in
the greenhouse. They consisted of ten females and of a single hermaphrodite.
Whether or not the conditions to which they had been subjected caused the great
excess of females I do not know. In the females the pistil is rather longer than
that of the hermaphrodite, and the stamens are mere rudiments, with minute
colourless anthers destitute of pollen. The windows of the greenhouse were left
open, and the flowers were incessantly visited by humble and hive bees. Although
the ten females did not produce a single grain of pollen, yet they were all
thoroughly well fertilised by the one hermaphrodite plant, and this is an
interesting fact. It should be added that no other plant of this species grew in
my garden. The seeds were collected from the finest female plant, and they
weighed 78 grains; whilst those from the hermaphrodite, which was a rather
larger plant than the female, weighed only 33.
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