Fig. 102.—Flower of Fuchsia in which the calyx was leafy, the petals normal (reflexed in the figure), the stamens partially converted into ovaries, the ordinary inferior ovary being absent. See Substitution.
Robert Brown[204] observed stamens within the utricle of Carex acuta, and Gay is stated by Moquin ('El. Ter. Veg.,' p. 343) to have observed a similar occurrence in Carex glauca.
Paasch[205] observed a similar occurrence in C. cæspitosa, and Schauer, in C. paludosa,[206] though in the latter instance the case seems to have been one of transformation or substitution rather than one of hermaphroditism.
The second cause of this pseudo-hermaphroditism is due either to the more or less perfect mutation of male and female organs, or it may be to the complete absence of one and its replacement by another, as when out of many stamens, one or more are deficient, and their places occupied by carpels. This happens very frequently in willows and poplars, and has been seen in the beech.[207]
Fig. 103.—Hermaphrodite flower of Carica Papaya.
In Begonia frigida[208] the anomaly is increased by the position of the ovaries above, the perianth, a position due, not to any solution or detachment of the latter from the former, but simply to the presence of ovaries where, under ordinary circumstances, stamens only are formed, as happened also in a garden variety of a Fuchsia, wherein, however, the change was less perfect than in the Begonia, and in which, as the flower is naturally hermaphrodite, the alteration is of the less importance.