dioiceous

Updated: May 19, 2025

There is, however, another final cause, to which this circumstance may be imputed: it was observed above, that vegetable buds and bulbs, which are produced without a mother, are always exact resemblances of their parent; as appears in grafting fruit-trees, and in the flower-buds of the dioiceous plants, which are always of the same sex on the same tree; hence those hermaphrodite insects, if they could have produced young without a mother, would not have been, capable of that change or improvement, which is seen in all other animals, and in those vegetables, which are procreated by the male embryon received and nourished by the female.

Erasmus Darwin - Zoonomia, Vol. I: Or, the Laws of Organic Life