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Updated: May 22, 2025
It must have struck most naturalists as a strange anomaly that, both with animals and plants, some species of the same family and even of the same genus, though agreeing closely with each other in their whole organisation, are hermaphrodites, and some unisexual.
They are soon attached to solid rocks, or other supports, and do not move at all. And if they do, how could they cross thousands of miles of ocean barren of all food? Dr. George W. Field, an expert authority, says the oysters of Europe are unisexual, but in America, they are double-sexed. How could one be derived from the other? Even the oyster is too much for the evolutionist.
In plants, likewise, a long and most finely graduated series of transitions leads from bisexual to unisexual blossoms; and so in various other respects. Everywhere we may perceive that Nature secures her ends, and makes her distinctions on the whole manifest and real, but everywhere without abrupt breaks.
In the polypetalous forms progression from hypogyny to epigyny is generally recognized, and where dorsiventrality with insect-pollination has been established, a dominant group has been developed as in the Leguminosae. The starting-point of the class, however, and the position within it of apetalous families with frequently unisexual flowers, have provoked much discussion.
But to enlarge the range of the varieties this simple and stable form would need to be treated anew, by crossing it with the parent-types. Such experiments however, have miscarried owing to the too stable nature of the unit-characters. This stability and this absence of the splitting shown by varietal marks in the offspring of hybrids is one of the best proofs of unisexual unions.
This shrub is rendered of particular interest on account of the intense silvery hue of the foliage. The leaves are narrow and lanceolate, silvery on both sides, and dotted over with rusty-brown scales beneath. The flowers, which are produced in April, are small and yellow, unisexual, or each sex on a distinct plant. Berries scarlet, about the size of red Currants, and ripe about September.
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