Wichita eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1886-1890, 1888-09-05
FacTs ABOUT DATES.
something About the Discovery Of Sex h
Plants and Its Importance.

| something About this Discovery Of Sex h
| Plants and Its Importance
In its wild and native state the date
| palm forms q tail and gracious tree OF
stately aspect. inferior in beauty, it is
true, to the cocoanut, and still more to
the mountain cabbage palm, but, with
the usual high and slender stem of all IFS
class, surmounted at the top by tuft CT
rosette Of spreading feathery pinnate
leaves. deep green in hue. and from nine
to twelve feet long in well grown
specimens. There are some very fine
ones, well known to most European tour
lists, in the gardens and courtyards Of
Algiers and Oran. In height they some
times reach as much as eighty feet near
running watery and az they live and bear
seed for 200 years, the follower OF the
prophet who plants date palm may in
deed be regarded as laboring for posterity.
The trees begin 10 bear fruit at seven
years old, produce abundantiy at twenty.
and go on supplying his children's chill
dren far on into second century.
The most interesting item about the
date palm, however, is the fact that it
was the first species in which the dis
tinction of eek in plants was ever noticed.
As long ago as the days OF Herodotus,
and doubtless dozens of centuries earlier,
the Egyptians and Babylonians knew
that the dates could only be fully set by
hanging the clusters of male flowers
where their pollen could fall upon the
female blossoms and inpregnate the
ovaries. AS usual, this but of abstract
knowledge was earliest acquired where it
brought itself to bear upon the universal
subject of human sympathy, the q,les-
ton Of dinner. Your countryman who
knows all other fungi merely in the
lump by the common name of hoadstools
can discriminate as accurately is a
trained fungologist the edible mushroom
from all inferior species. Your epicure
with the vaguest views as to slugs and
snails can safely be trusted, not only to
identify that familiar bivalre, Ostrsa
edulis, but even to distinguish between
such minor varieties as the Portuguese
and the Wbitstable native. the Blue
Point and the genuine Saddle Rock.
And so, too, the distinction of male and
female in the date palm forced itself
violently upon the attention of hungry
humanity ages before LinnRus had
demonstrated the functions of pollen or
the arrangements of sexes in the rose
and the buttercup.
Most plants, as all the world now
knows, have the stanens, which produce
the pollen, and the pistn. which contains
Il,
the same blossom; though even IN such
cases provision is usually made for cross
fertilization by the agency of insects,
either because the stamens and pistils do
not both mature simultaneously, or be
cause the pollen is SO arranged as never
to fall naturally upon the sensitivesigma
of the unripe capsule. But in few
plants-as, for example, in the common
begonia and in box and pellitory-the
male and female flowers are quite dis
tinct, though both grow upon the same
stem; and in yet others, like the red
canpion, the hop, and the hautboy straw
berry. one plant viii produce nothing
but barren or stamen bearing flowers,
while another will produce only fertile
ortruit bearing blossoms. In this last
case, to which category the date palm
belongs the sexes are strictly and abso-
lutelv separated. Each individual plant
OF the sort may property beregarded as
a huge phalanstery or community of
male or female flowers, for which the
bee or other insect acts as go between.
Now, every separate date palm is thus
either pollen bearer or fruit producer,
ard rs it Is impossible TO tell beforehand
whether any particular seed will bring
forth male or female plant, the Arabs,
who wish, of course, for fertile palms
only, do .notsusually propagate from seed
at all ,sbut prefer to raise their young
stock by slips or suckers, taken from tho
foot of afeu,ala.tree. During the flower
Ing season they cut off the bra1Ghes.or
spikes of blossom from the wild pollen
bearing palms or from few cultivated
ones grown for that special purpose, and
hang them byctbe,side of the fruit bear
ing flowers in theirown gardens. The
beeSsand other insects chen rapidly and
etfectually set'the>fruit by unconsciously
carrying the pollen aboutson their bodies
ns'they hunt for honey in The adtacerA
punches. The account given of this pro-
cess by Herodotus is just as fun and just
ascorrect in principle as any thai
could be given by modem bot
anist. The male flowers grow. az
a>rule, somewhat larger than. thefenale,
but both are built on the usual palm
model, which is, in fact, merely that Of
the ordinary lines little diverted. Each
has SIX petals, not very brightly oolored,
but pale yellowish greea in hue. inclosing
either six stanens or else q three celled
ovary. of which two cells have become
abortive. The palms, indeed, are arbor-
escent lilies on large scale; and snch
tropical species as the yuccas and the
dracanas on tho other hand, With the
subtropicl palmettos and fan palms On
the -other. help In part to bridge over the
gulf between the two orders. In other
words, under the exceptional conditions
Of tropical life. certain luxuriant lily like
foIms assume the shape and stature Of
trees, and those trees arc what we call
palms, marked stil by the original lily
blossoms and by the peculiar tuf,ei char
acter Of their kares.-CoraluliM Magazine.
Warming Against Self consciousness.
Self consciousness is probably the
greatest enemy to beauty, either Of per-
Son or manner, and it Is curious il is q
vice flor one really xrauts tn call II fhaf