An introduction to the science of botany : chiefly extracted from the works of Linnaeus, to which are added several new tables and notes and a life of the author / by the late James Lee.

  • James Lee
Date:
1810
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An introduction to the science of botany : chiefly extracted from the works of Linnaeus, to which are added several new tables and notes and a life of the author / by the late James Lee. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

    80/636 (page 52)
    inserted in the Philosophical Transactions*, concerning a remark- able experiment made on the palm-tree. Professor Mj/lius's Letter to Doctor Watson, dated at Berlin, February 20, 1750—51. The sex of plants is very well confirmed, by an experiment that has been made here on the palma major foliis flabclliformi- bus. There is a great tree of this kind in the garden of the Royal Academy. It has flowered and bore fruit these thirty years, but the fruit never ripened, and when planted, it did not vegetate. The palm-tree, as you know, is a planta dia:cia; that is, one of those in which the male and female parts of generation are upon different plants. We having therefore no male plants, the flowers of our female were never impregnated with the farina of the male. There is a male plant of this kind in a garden at Leipsic, twenty German miles from Berlin. We procured from thence, in April, 1749, a branch of male flowers, and suspend- ed it over our female ones; and our experiment succeeded so well, that our palm-tree produced more than an hundred per- fectly ripe fruit; from which we have already eleven young palm-trees. This experiment was repeated last year, and cm- palm-tree bore above two thousand ripe fruit. As I do not re- member a like experiment, I thought it convenient to mention it to you; and, if you think proper, be pleased to communicate it to the Royal Society/' This letter, which was read to the Society the 2d of May, 1751, with some ingenious observations on the same subject, by Dr. Watson, F. R. S. to whom it was addressed-]-, has established the fact, attested by the ancients, concerning the palm-tree, which some may, perhaps, have looked upon as fabulous; and, • Vol. XLVII. Page 169. f Printed also in ;he Philosophical Transactions with the letter.