(9/13. Mr. Wilder, the editor of a horticultural journal
in the United States quoted in 'Gardeners' Chronicle' 1868 page 1286,
states that Lilium auratum, Impatiens pallida and fulva, and Forsythia
viridissima, cannot be fertilised with their own pollen.)
As with plants of the same species and parentage, some individuals are
self-sterile and others self-fertile, of which fact Reseda odorata
offers the most striking instances, it is not at all surprising that
species of the same genus differ in this same manner. Thus Verbascum
phoeniceum and nigrum are self-sterile, whilst V. thapsus and lychnitis
are quite self-fertile, as I know by trial. There is the same difference
between some of the species of Papaver, Corydalis, and of other genera.
Nevertheless, the tendency to self-sterility certainly runs to a certain
extent in groups, as we see in the genus Passiflora, and with the
Vandeae amongst Orchids.
Self-sterility differs much in degree in different plants. In those
extraordinary cases in which pollen from the same flower acts on the
stigma like a poison, it is almost certain that the plants would never
yield a single self-fertilised seed. Other plants, like Corydalis cava,
occasionally, though very rarely, produce a few self-fertilised seeds. A
large number of species, as may be seen in Table 9/F, are less fertile
with their own pollen than with that from another plant; and lastly,
some species are perfectly self-fertile.
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