THE HYBRIDISING OF FLOWERS.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLV, Issue 21, 23 November 1910, Page 43

THE HYBRIDISING OF FLOWERS.

The Mount Lofty Horticultural and Floricultural Society held its usual monthly meeting in the Stirling West Town Hall. An unusually large attendance, mainly of professional gardeners, assembled to hear an address bv Mr. F. Caley Smith, of Aidgate, upon “The Hybridising of Flowers.” A more correct title would have been “ Some facts about the sexual functions of plants.” Mr. Smith brought sample blooms of some 30 or 40 different species and families of plants to illustrate some of the different methods evolved by Nature to most successfully secure fertilisation, also a splendid collection of about 50 varieties of superbissima petunias. “The schizanthus,” he remarked, as he exhibited the blossom and its parts, “well shows the catapult action adopted to throw up the pollen so that it might fall upon the pistil or on an insect intruder.” The native Stylidium was an even more notable instance. The Lucerne blossom illustrated the spring action used by many flowers. The horse chestnut the Rhododendron and the Salvias exhibit the lever action. The scarlet runner bean has a combination of both lever and screw. The small and apparently useless blossoms of the violet usually were concealed under the foliage, and provide the abundant seed to be found in a violet bed. Though having no petals or “corolla,” they carry tiny pistils, and

stamens, and are called “deistogamous,” meaning “concealed unions.” The lecturer showed how in most flowers the organs were plainly exposed to action ot air or insects, etc. Others, like the sweet pea, are tightly dosed up in the sheath of the keel of the flower, and causing the flower to be self fertile. Very many flowers, such, for instance, as the gladiolus, petunia, and carnation, ripen the pollen bearing anthers before the pistil becomes receptive with the object of preventing self fertilisation, and consequent degeneration. He remarked how the gladiolus grown in the hills has one almost unfailing ministering agent for the cross fertilisation of its stamens, viz., the long billed honey eater. The pollen is usually good for only one day or part of a day, but this bird in its assiduous search for honey flies rapidly over a bed carrying the fresh pollen from one flower, and fertilising the waiting stamens of another. These stamens, which at first are well back against the upper petals gradually curl forward till they' are often nearly touching the lower petals. They persist day after day, waiting for some good providence in the shape of a bird, bee, insect or the wind to help perform their one and sole function in life, the reproduction of the species. On the Adelaide plains and in many other places where these flowers do not set seed well, it is possibly largely owing to the absence of the “honev bird.”

An interesting item of the address was the supposed origin of the many lovely and gorgeous colourings and markings of the superbissima petunia, viz., from the hybridisation of the salpiglossis upon the petunia. Mr. Smith showed sprays carrying flowers and seed pods of both plants and invited attention t > the very similar characteristics of both. Although the speaker had not noticed intermediate forms in beds of his hand crossed superbissima, he had petun as from a German strain, viz., “German Empress,” which were very close indeed in size and form of flower, foliage and steins, so much so as to give very good reason to believe the supposition to be correct. Mr. Smith pointed this out as a simple and easy experiment of unusual interest to the gardeners present, and advised its being attempted. The question of where the pollen from double flowered stocks came from for the pollination of single stocks opened an interesting subject, one grower having seen single stocks alone grown under glass and the resultant seed produced 80 pel cent of doubles. The lecturer pointe out that this opened out another most interesting question, viz., Is the quality of doubleness as inherent in a strain as that of colour appears to be? In the petunia, at any rate, it is not, nor in the carnation. At the close of a talk, which was in tently listened to for an hour, tin speaker urged the necessity of both read ing and observation to enable the growers to be intelligent students of plant life as well as practical growers of plants The life of a gardener, intelligently lived, should be the most fascinating of all existence.—“ Australian Journal of Horticulture.”