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It has likewise been raised from seeds collected in different years at the original station. It is also wholly pistillate. Apparently the anthers are robust, but they are dry, wrinkled and nearly devoid of contents. The inner wall of cells around the groups of pollen grow out instead of being resorbed, partly filling the cavity which is left free by the miscarriage of the pollen-grains.
How well I remember the disappointment and wrath of people who bought the plants at a high price, and set them out with no staminate varieties near to fertilize the pistillate blossoms. Expectations were raised to the highest pitch by profuse blossoming in May, but not a berry could be found the ensuing June.
It is to be admitted, however, that no material evidence is at hand to prove that it is not an original wild species, the pistillate form of which has been lost by vegetative multiplication. One form only of many dioecious plants is to be found in cultivation, as, for instance some South American species of Ribes.
In cleft grafting walnuts is it necessary to use scions with only a leaf bud, or with staminate or pistillate buds? Is cutting the pith of the scion or stock fatal to the tree? In grafting walnuts it is usual to take shoots bearing wood buds, and not the spurs which carry the fruit blossoms, although a part of the graft containing also a wood bud can be used, retaining the latter.
His, too, was the seminal mind; though Lowell was unfair to the disciple, when he described him as a pistillate blossom fertilized by the Emersonian pollen. For Thoreau had an originality of his own a flavor as individual as the tang of the bog cranberry, or the wild apples which he loved. One secure advantage he possesses in the concreteness of his subject-matter.
While I am innocent of either ability or intent to write botanically of the great oak family, I ought perhaps to transcribe the information that the flowers we see if we look just at the right time in the spring are known as "staminate catkins," which, being interpreted, means that there are also pistillate flowers, much less conspicuous, but exceedingly necessary if acorns are to result; and also the fact that the familiar "pussy-willow" of our acquaintance is the same form of bloom the catkin, or ament.
I go about the house, up steep, worn stairs, down again and out into a garden where there is a single strawberry and I think staminate and pistillate plants should be set out to insure fertilization. Always I think of the closed door and presently I return to the house and enter the room behind the stove. On the floor is a green veil of firm texture.
The Hortensia of our gardens is another instance of a sterile form which has been observed to throw out a branch with cymes bearing in their center the usual small staminate and pistillate flowers instead of the large radiate and neutral corollas of the variety, thereby returning to the original wild type. Crisped weeping-willows, crisped parsley and others have reverted in a similar manner.
In midwinter, when most of the other trees are asleep, this cedar puts forth its flowers in millions, the pistillate pale green and inconspicuous, but the staminate bright yellow, tingeing all the branches and making the trees as they stand in the snow look like gigantic goldenrods.
It is a little shrub, belonging to the Cornaceae, and has broad elliptical undivided leaves. On the middle of the midvein these leaves are seen to bear small clusters of flowers; indeed this is the only place where flowers are produced. Each cluster has from 13-15 flowers, of which some are staminate and borne on stalks, while others are pistillate and nearly sessile.
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