FIG. 9 FIG. 10 FIG. 11
The asparagus flowers are mostly solitary at the nodes, of greenish-yellow color, drooping or filiform, jointed peduncles; perianth, six-parted, campanulate, as seen in Fig. 8. Anthers, introrse; style, short; stigma, three-lobed; berry, red, spherical, three-celled; cells, two-seeded. While the flowers are generally diœcious—staminate and pistillate flowers being borne on different plants—there appear also hermaphrodite flowers, having both pistils and fully developed stamens in the same flower. Fig. 9 shows a pistillate, Fig. 10 a staminate, and Fig. 11 a hermaphrodite or bisexual flower.
In one case, at least, the author has also observed that a plant which has been barren of seed at first changed into a seed-bearing plant the following year. Similar changes in the sexuality of strawberries have been observed under certain conditions. These facts may explain, in a measure, the difficulty experienced in raising permanently sterile asparagus plants.
Asparagus acutifolius.—A native of Southern Europe and Northern Africa. It has a fleshy rootstock, hard, wiry, brown stems, five to seven feet high, with rigid branches three to six inches long, thickly closed, with tufts of gray-green, hair-like, rigid leaves, which in exposed situations are almost spinous. Flowers yellow, a quarter of an inch in diameter, fragrant. The young sprouts are tender, and, when cooked, of a peculiar aromatic flavor. In their native home they are used like the cultivated kind.
A. aphyllus.—Indigenous to Greece, where the young shoots are commonly used as food, especially during Lent.
III
CULTURAL VARIETIES
