North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[Jwlehman@aol.com]

In a message dated 12/22/2004 9:19:24 AM US Eastern Standard Time, jfruth@uslink.net writes:

> The 'Illustrated Flora of the Northern United States and Canada," by Britton
> &Brown describes VITIS (That's, "Grape," in Latin) as follows:
> ............................Flowers mostly dioecious, or polygamo-dioecious,
> rarely perfect.  Webster defines 'dioecious' as, "Having staminate and
> pistillate flowers borne on different individuals."  "Perfect" means to have
> both [functional] male and female flower parts within the same flower.


I would add a foot note to the last statement or insert as I've done above. 

Take persimmon flowers for example. The pistillate flowers also contain undeveloped stamens, but both are there. Likewise the staminate flowers contain undeveloped pistils but both are there.     

Jerry