These plants were all kept under a net, so that the capsules which they
produced must have been all spontaneously self-fertilised. The eight
crossed plants produced twenty-one such capsules, of which only twelve
contained any seed, averaging 8.5 per capsule. On the other hand, the
eight self-fertilised plants produced no less than thirty-six capsules,
of which I examined twenty-five, and, with the exception of three, all
contained seeds, averaging 10.63 seeds per capsule. Thus the
proportional number of seeds per capsule produced by the plants of
crossed origin to those produced by the plants of self-fertilised origin
(both lots being spontaneously self-fertilised) was as 100 to 125. This
anomalous result is probably due to some of the self-fertilised plants
having varied so as to mature their pollen and stigmas more nearly at
the same time than is proper to the species; and we have already seen
that some plants in the first experiment differed from the others in
being slightly more self-fertile.
THE EFFECTS OF A CROSS WITH A FRESH STOCK.
Twenty flowers on the self-fertilised plants of the last or third
generation, in Table 4/46, were fertilised with their own pollen, but
taken from other flowers on the same plants. These produced fifteen
capsules, which contained (omitting two with only three and six seeds)
on an average 47.23 seeds, with a maximum of seventy in one.
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