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Updated: May 23, 2025
With poppies the various varieties are so often intercrossed by bees, that the appearance of an accidental change may sometimes be produced, and in the houseleek the pistilloid warily seems to be the ordinary one, the normal strain being very rare or perhaps wholly wanting. Our three illustrative examples are good and permanent races, producing their peculiar qualities regularly and abundantly.
But no effort has yet been made to separate thoroughly the pistilloid half-races from the corresponding ever-sporting varieties. Some plants are recorded as being more liable to this peculiarity than others. Stamens are sometimes replaced by open carpels with naked ovules arising from their edges and even from their whole inner surfaces.
It will therefore hardly be necessary to give a full description of all my experiments on the relations of the monstrosity to external conditions. A hasty survey will suffice. This survey is not only intended to convey an idea of the relations of pistilloid poppies to their environment, but may serve as an example of the principle involved.
It should be stated that in such experiments and especially in the case of such a showy criterion as the pistilloid heads afford after the time of flowering is over, the inspection of the controlling beds at once indicates the result of the experiment. Even a hasty survey is in most cases sufficient to get a definite conclusion.
In the young flower-bud of the pistilloid poppy there must evidently be some moment in which it is definitely decided whether the young stamens will grow out normally or become metamorphosed into secondary pistils. From this moment no further change of external conditions is able to produce a corresponding change in the degree of the anomaly.
But unfortunately such a method requires the planting out of the young seedlings in the beginning of the summer, and this operation is not without danger for opium-poppies, and especially not without important influence on the monstrosity of the pistilloid variety. Consequently my sowings of this plant have nearly always been made in the beds.
It is a case exactly similar to that of the supernumerary carpels of the pistilloid poppy, and the deductions arrived at with that variety may be applied directly to double flowers. This dependency upon nourishment is of high practical importance in combination with the usual effect of the doubling which makes the flowers sterile.
Goeppert, Hofmeister and others occasionally found the pistilloid poppies in fields or gardens, and sowed their seeds in order to ascertain whether the accidental peculiarity was inheritable or not.
In other words, the anomaly is more dependent on external conditions during the germinating period than on the choice of the seeds, providing these belong to the pistilloid variety and have not deteriorated by some crossing with other sorts.
In connection with the foregoing arguments I have tried to separate the choicest of the poppies with the largest crown of pistilloid stamens, from the most vigorous individuals. As we have already seen, these two attributes are as a rule proportional to one another. Exceptions occur, but they may be explained by some later changes in the external circumstances, as I have also pointed out.
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