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The outer skin is not equally thick and hard all over. It has little glazed spots sometimes, like little glazed windows. Now, when the pistil is ripe the stigma is sticky. When the pollen grain falls upon this sticky stigma its inside wall swells up, just as the bean does when we soak it.
"An' he sez, 'Fire, one, two' an' ez he said 'one, old Cun'l Chahmb'lin raised he pistil an' shot right at Marse Chan. De ball went th'oo his hat. I seen he hat sort o' settle on he head ez de bullit hit it, an' HE jes' tilted his pistil up in de a'r an' shot-BANG; an' ez de pistil went BANG, he sez to Cun'l Chahmb'lin, 'I mek you a present to yo' fam'ly, seh!
"'Where are you taking me? says I. "'Be quiet, says he, 'or' And with that he put the pistil to my cheek, ordered me to get out, take the bandage from my eyes and walk before him. I did so and saw dimly that we were in a part of the country that I was never at before. We were in a dark road through a thick forest.
Several plants belonging to distinct orders present two forms, which exist in about equal numbers and which differ in no respect except in their reproductive organs; one form having a long pistil with short stamens, the other a short pistil with long stamens; the two having differently sized pollen-grains.
The racemes of purple bells held up by the foxglove are methodically visited by it, commencing at the bottom flower, and ascending step by step to the highest. The four stamens and the pistil of the foxglove are laid closely against the upper side of the flower. First a stamen on one side opens its anthers and exposes its pollen. The humble-bee, as it bustles in and out, brushes this off.
Let me quote her words: "The child can learn the difference of the names, color, and forms of flowers as soon as it can learn anything. The next step would be to simple lessons in the different parts of a plant the vegetative organs of roots, stem, leaves, passing on to the reproductive organs in the flower calyx, corolla, stamen, and pistil.
Yet the pistil of each cabbage-flower is surrounded not only by its own six stamens, but by those of the many other flowers on the same plant. How, then, comes it that such a vast number of the seedlings are mongrelized?
Other bell-flowers hang their apertures downwards, as many of the lilies; in those the pistil, when at maturity, is longer than the stamens; and by this pendant attitude of the bell, when the anthers burst, their dust falls on the stigma: and these are at the same time sheltered as with an umbrella from rain and dews.
If an occasional cross be indispensable, notwithstanding that the plant's own anthers and pistil stand so near each other as almost to ensure self-fertilisation, the fullest freedom for the entrance of pollen from another individual will explain the above state of exposure of the organs.
This pistil consists of a number of carpels, arranged in many rows very regularly on a central receptacle; each carpel has a style, ending in a slightly-lobed stigma; and an ovary, wherein lies one single ovule, or young seed. The course of the transformation of this apparatus into fruit is highly curious and interesting.
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