self-fertilisation

• “Some of the kinds have their floral organs so arranged as to be capable of self-fertilisation; still, it is always as well to give them some assistance.”

  Cactus Culture for Amateurs Being Descriptions of the Various Cactuses Grown in This Country, With Full and Practical Instructions for Their Successful Cultivation

• “The most curious point you have brought out seems to me the slight superiority of self-fertilisation over fertilisation with another flower of the same plant, and the most important result, that difference of constitution is the essence of the benefit of cross-fertilisation.”

  Alfred Russel Wallace Letters and Reminiscences

• “If an occasional cross be indispensable, notwithstanding that the plant’s own anthers and pistil stand so near each other as almost to insure self-fertilisation, the fullest freedom for the entrance of pollen from another individual will explain the above state of exposure of the organs.”

  IV. Natural Selection; or the Survival of the Fittest. On the Intercrossing of Individuals

• “How strange that the pollen and stigmatic surface of the same flower, though placed so close together, as if for the very purpose of self-fertilisation, should be in so many cases mutually useless to each other!”

  IV. Natural Selection; or the Survival of the Fittest. On the Intercrossing of Individuals

• “Even if these take place only at long intervals of time, the young thus produced will gain so much in vigour and fertility over the offspring from long-continued self-fertilisation, that they will have a better chance of surviving and propagating their kind; and thus in the long run the influence of crosses, even at rare intervals, will be great.”

  IV. Natural Selection; or the Survival of the Fittest. Circumstances Favourable for the Production of New Forms Through Natural Selection

• “Lamarckiana_ by self-fertilisation were of the same form with the same characters, but a certain percentage presented 'mutations' -- that is, characters different from the parent form, and in some cases identical with those of plants occurring occasionally among those growing wild in the field where the observations began.”

  Hormones and Heredity

• “Cross-fertilisation is much surer by insects than by the wind, and cross-fertilisation is more advantageous than self-fertilisation because it promotes both fertility and plasticity.”

  The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) A Plain Story Simply Told

• “Finally he concludes: "It is hardly an exaggeration to say that nature tells us, in the most emphatic manner, that she abhors perpetual self-fertilisation"; and thus was announced a new doctrine in botany.”

  Life of Charles Darwin

• “New Zealand, European plants in, 15 spread of white clover in, 28 effects of introduced plants in, 29 native rat and fly exterminated by European species, 34 many plants of, incapable of self-fertilisation, 321 fauna of, 348 few spiny plants in, 433”

  Darwinism (1889)

• “At one epoch the highest specialisation of structure in adaptation to a single species or group of insects may have saved a plant from extinction; while, at other times, the simplest mode of self-fertilisation, combined with greater powers of dispersal and a constitution capable of supporting diverse physical conditions, may have led to a similar result.”

  Darwinism (1889)

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