, 1888-07-13
c AeouT pATEs.
Something About the Discovery OF Sex In
Plants and Its Importance.

Something About the Discovery OF Sex In
Plants and Its Importance.
In its wild and native state the date
palm forms a tall and gracious tree of
stately aspect, inferior in beauty, it is
true, to the cocoanut, and still more to
IKE mountain cabbage palm, but, with
the usual high and slender stem of all its
class, surmounted at the top by a tuft or
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 c%ourtyards of
Algiers and Oran. In height they some
times reach as much as eighty feet near
running water; and as they live and,bear
seed for 200 years, the follower of the
prophet who plants a date palm may in
deed be r~egardedsas laboring for posterity.
The trees begin to bear fruit at seven
years old, produce a~bundantly at twenty,
and go on supplying his children's chill
dren far OIL into a 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 sex in plants was ever noticed.
AS long e 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 impregnate the
rovaries. AS usual, this bit of abstract
knowledge was earliest acquired whereit
brought itself to bear upon the universal
subject of human sympathy, the ques-
ton Of dinner. Your co~untryman who
knows all other fungi merely in the
lump by b common name of toadstools
a discriminate as accurately as a
trained fungologistt 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 bivalve, Ostrea
edulis, but even to distinguish between
such minor varieties as the Portuguese
and the Whitaable native, the Blue
/ Point m the genuine Saddle Rock.
And 30, too, the.distinction of male and
female in the date palm forced itself
violently upon the attention of hungry
humanity ages before Linneus had
demonstrated thelfunctions of pollen or
the arrangements of sexes in the rose
n the buttercup.
Most plants, as all the world now
knows, have the stamens, which produce
the pollen, and the pistil. which contains
the embryonic seeds, inclbsed in one and
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 fa~llnaturally upon the sensitive stigma
of the unripe capsule. But in a few
plants-as, for example, in the common
begonia and In box and pellitory-the
males n female flowers are quite dis
tinct, Though both grow upon the same
stem; and in yet others, like the red
campion, the p,,and the hautboy straw
berry,, one plant will produce nothing
but barren or stamen bearing flowers,
while another will produce only fertile
orfruittb bearing blossoms. In this last
case, to which category the date palm
belongs, the sexes ARE 5strictlyaand abso-
lutely' separated. Eachindividual plant
ofStheisort may tproperlyNbe regarded as
atshuge p~halanstery or community of
male'or female flowers, for which tho
bee or other1insect acts ASA go between.
Now, .~everysseparate date,palm, is .thus.
either a~<polenrbearer or afruit producer,
and as tits 'impossible,to tell'beforehand
whether any particular seed will bring
forth,amaletorl female plapt,1the Arabs,
who wish, sof course, for fertile palms
only dp'notsusually'prop
at all,Sbut prefer to raise their young
stocksby' slipstorssuckers ,.takenyfrom the
Observation-Disclosures. During the flower
tng.season theyicpt off the branches, or
spikes of blossomsfrom the wild pollen
bearing palms .ortfrom q few cultivated
nnpa.0rDu-n acknowledgements p,,rNAaa on1
OBSERVATION-DISCLOSURES the, fruit bear
ngyfowers sinstheir own gardens. The
beessand other{nsects Sthen rapidly. and
NEUTRALITY-SUSPICIOUS. unconsciously
carrying the pollen aboutton their bodies
asItheyyhunt for honey in the adjacent
bnnches. Theiaccounttgiven ofhhis pro-
cess iby.91erodotusiis just as full and just
asicorrect in principle as n that
cogld Hbe given by q modern bot
anist. The male flowers grow, as
asrule, somewhat observation-disclosures
Y both are built onsthe usual palm
MODEL, which is, in fact, merely that of
b ordinary Zines a littlefdiverted. Each
has1ixspetals, not veryEbrightly colored,
MISUNDERSTANDING een,ini hue, inclosing
either six,stamens>or elset a'three. celled
ovarg5ofswhich two cells nave become
aboHhve. The palms, indeed, are arbor-
scent lilies, on'a largesscale; Il and such
tropicaIt species as the yuccasy and the
dFdcenas, IN the other hand, with the
sub-tropical ,palmettos and fan palms on
the,other. help inlpart to- bridgelover the
gulf between theNtwo orders. In other
words, under the exceptional conditions
o~fstropical life inluxuriantIlily like
forms assume the shape'and stature of
trees,sand those trees are what we call
galmssmarked still. by the original lily
char
acter offtheirleavesF-C ornhinsMagazine