THE RURAL WORLD.

King Country Chronicle, Volume VI, Issue 500, 14 September 1912, Page 7

THE RURAL WORLD.

SEEDING OF PLANTS. Seed is the outcome of sex in plants. Perpetuation of the race is almost as much a consequence of sex in the vegetable as it is in the animal king dom. To this fact of the seeding of plants is due the division of plants into annuals, biennials and perennials. Annuals spring up, perfect their seeds, and die in the course of the season. Biennials require parts of two summers to arrive at perfection. The life of the perennials is not limited to the act of ripening seed, but to the durability and spreading properties of their roots. There are, besides, anomalous plants like the American aloe, which dies after seeding, but which takes a variable number of years to develop its seeds. In its native habitat it takes four or five years. Phanerogamous or visibly flowering plants are in the main those which chiefly concern the horticulturist. Ferns and mosses are grown but for their foilage, their sex envelopes being unattractive. In visibly flowering plants the sexes are easily discoverable, being usually concealed within the floral envelope, the colouring of which consstitutes the beauty of the flower. Most flowers have the two sexes together, and are, therefore, called hermaphrodite. Such are the tulip, the rose, and the mass of plants grown for floral decoration. A few have the two sexes distributed about their branches separate from each other, like the oak and the hazel, but always upon the same root. These are called biaextual plans. Others have the sexes quite apart, on different roots, often removed miles from each other, Such are the poplar, the willow, the aucuba, and the date palm. They are called unisexual plants. Lastly, there are some even more peculiar ones than these, called polygamous. Here, one plant has male flowers, another has female flowers, and on a third plant there are male and female flowers together. Of such the fig is an example. This estrangement of the sexes upon different plants often removed from one another by considerable distances has been productive of some curious results. The best known case is that of the Aucuba japonica, of which only barren female plants existed in England until 1861, when Mr Fortune introduced the male plants from the East. Since then the female plants have produced fertile berries. The question of the fertilisation of plants is a wide one, and hass occupied the attention of many scientific men.