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Show 102 HETEROSTYLED DIMORPHIC PLANTS. CHAP. III. 70 per cent.) had set fruit, yielding 1·86 seed per fruit. So that the short-styled plants produced many more flowers, and these set a rather larger proportion of fruit, but the fruits thmnselves yielded a slightly lower average number of seeds than did the longstyled plants. The results of Hildebrand's experiments on the fertility of the two forms are given in the following table:- TABLE 19. Pulmonaria officinalis (from Hildebrand). Number I Number Average Nature of Union. of of Fruits Number Fl~~ers produced. of Seeds fertilised. per Fruit. Long-sty led flowers, by pollen of shol't-} styled. Legitimate union . • • . 14 10 1·30 Long-styled flowers, 14 by own-pollen,} and 16 by pollen of other plant of same 30 0 0 fo1·m. Illegitimate union . . . • Shol't-styled flowers, by pollen of long-} styled. Legitimate union • • . . 16 14 1•57 Short-styled flowers, 11 by own pollen, J 14 by pollen of other plant of same 25 0 0 form. Illegitimate union . . . . In the summer of 1864, before I had heard of Hildebrand's experiments, I noticed some long-styled plants of this species (named for me by Dr. Hooker) growing by themselves in a garden in Surrey ; and to my surprise about half the flowers had set fruit, several of which contained 2, and one contained even 3 seeds. These seeds were sown in my garden and eleven seedlings thus raised, all of which proved long-sty led, in accordance with the usual rule in such cases. Two years afterwards the plants were left uncovered, no CHAP. III. PULMONARIA OFFICINALIS. 103 other plant of the same genus growing in my garden and the flowers were -visited by many bees. They set an abundance of seeds : for instance, I gathered from a single plant rather less than half of the seeds which it had produced, and they numbered 47. Therefore this illegitimately fertilised plant must have produced about 100 seeds; that is, thrice as many as one of the wild long-styled plants collected on the Siebengebirge by Hildebrand, and which, no doubt, had been legitimately fertilised. In the following year one of my plants was covered by a net, and even under these unfavourable conditions it produced spontaneously a few seeds. It should be observed that as the :flowers stand either almost horizontally or hang considerably downwards, pollen from the short stamens would be likely to fall on the stigma. vVe thus see that the English long-styled plants when illegiti1nately fertilised were highly fertile, whilst the German plants similarly treated by Hildebrand were completely sterile. How to account for this wide discordance in our results I know not. Hildebrand cultivated his plants in pots and kept them for a time in the house, whilst mine were grown out of doors; and he thinks that this difference of treatment may have caused the difference in our results. But this does not appear to me nearly a sufficient cause, although his plants were slightly less productive than the wild ones growing on the Siebengebirge. My plants exhibited no tendency to become equal-sty led, so as to lose their proper long-styled character, as not rarely happens under cultivation with several heterostyled species of Primula; but it would appear that they had been greatly a.ffected in function, either by long-continued cultivation or by some other cause. We shall see in a future chapter that heterostyled plants illegiti1nately |