Science: Frustrated Petunias

From a plant’s point of view, its flowers are only a means to an end. Their purpose is to attract pollen-carrying insects. Once the ovules are fertilized, the plant devotes its energies to nurturing the infant seeds and so does not produce as many flowers as it might. This is good for the plant’s posterity, but bad for flower lovers.

Last week Dr. Herbert L. Everett of the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station told about a frustrated petunia that remains forever virgin and so goes right on flowering. Dr. Everett crossed two widely different varieties of petunia. One of the offspring was sterile; the flowers had proper female ovules but no fertile male pollen. By crossing and recrossing, Dr. Everett can now make most kinds of petunias sterile. They flaunt their flowers hopefully, inviting bees to visit them. The bees come as usual, but the flowers cannot dust them with fertilizing pollen. So the desperate virgin, to its own frustration and to the delight of flower lovers, blooms on unfulfilled until frost.