The Metamorphosis of Plants by J. W. v. Goethe Read Free Book Online Page A

condition, has not yet attained the very highest degree of purity, which would be white, absolutely without shade or colour.

C HAPTER VI
THE FORMATION OF THE STAMENS
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    The opinion set forth in the preceding paragraph appears still more probable when we think of the near relationship of the petals with the stamens. If the relationship between all the other organs were so obvious, so generally noticed and set beyond doubt, the present essay might seem superfluous.
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    Nature shows us this transition between petals and stamens taking place normally in several instances, in Canna , for example and in other plants of this family. Here a true but slightly changed petal contracts at the upper edge and an anther appears, in relation to which the rest of the petal takes the place of the filament.
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    In those plants which often produce double blossoms we can observe this transition in all its stages. In many kinds of roses, among the perfectly formed and coloured petals, other petals may appear which are contracted partly in the middle and partly at the sides. This contraction is caused by a little weal or protuberance which more or less resembles a perfect anther, while in just the same proportion the petal begins to take on the simpler form of a stamen. In some double poppies, fully developed anthers rest on petals of the thickly filled corolla which are very little changed; in others the petals are more or less drawn together by anther-like weals.
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    If all the stamens change into petals the flower will be seedless, but if in a flower which appears double, stamens are still developed, then fertilisation will take place.
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    Thus a stamen is produced when the organs, which until now we have seen expanding into petals, reappear in an extremely contracted and at the same time refined state. This once more confirms the truth of the observation put forward above, and we are made more and more aware of the alternating process of contraction and expansion whereby Nature at last reaches her goal.

C HAPTER VII
NECTARIES
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    Quick as the transition is in some plants from the corolla to the stamens, we perceive that Nature is not able to complete it in one step, but produces intermediate organs which resemble in form and effect sometimes one part of the plant and sometimes another. Although they vary greatly in form these organs may mostly be united under one heading: they are slow transitions from the petals to the stamens.
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    In effect, most of those variedly formed organs, which Linnaeus called nectaries, may be thus defined, and here again we have occasion to admire the keen power of penetration of this extraordinary man, who, without coming to a perfectly clear understanding of the function of these parts, trusted to his intuitive feeling and ventured to give a single name to such seemingly different organs.
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    Various petals show us their relationship to stamens; without noticeably changing their form they have little cavities or glands which secrete a kind of honey-juice. That this juice is a yet unelaborated and not yet fully differentiated fertilizing fluid we can to some extent surmise from the above considerations, and we shall be supported in this by further reasons which will be brought forward later on.
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    The so-called nectaries may also appear as independent organs and then they are formed sometimes like petals, sometimes like stamens. Thus, for example, the thirteen filaments, each with its little red ball, on the nectaries of Parnassia , very much resemble stamens. Others look like stamens without anthers, as for example in Valisneria or Feuillea , while in Pentapetes we find them in a circle alternating regularly with the stamens and in leaf-like form. In systematic descriptions too these organs are called Filamenta castrata petaliformia. Similar ambiguous forms are to be seen in Kigellaria and the Passion-flower.
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    In this sense the “secondary corollas” seem likewise to deserve the name of nectaries. For if