Lilies: Some interesting species bulbs, 1 by wallaby1

wallaby1 wrote:
I took a few more pics tonight and just downloaded them. One pic had a well focused flower but nothing else so I cropped it close. While looking at it I noticed what seemed to be a fused stamen/filament to the centre style. Another looked suspect, so I started to look at all the pics more closely.

Imagine my surprise when I saw that the whole stem of flowers on the right side stem have no pistils! Not a thing, I had to get my torch and go have a look with my own eyes. No ovary, I don't think there was anything there other than a gaping hole to the top.

http://www.esu.edu/~milewski/intro_biol_two/lab_3_seed_plts/...

I had noticed today that the flowers on that stem looked a little more 'squat', not as deep from top to bottom, more pancaked. I thought it must be my imagination or a stage of development.

I checked the ones I thought may be fused but they were only laid close as the pistil curved (the full length ones), and the whole thing isn't huge so they easily came into contact. I then decided to try placing pollen from the pistil-less flowers on the stigmas of the other flowers. There are 4 pistilled flowers fully open, the other side was slightly later opening but all seemed to open more rapidly, all 5 of them.

My thinking is that they might be male, the others female, the females opening at a more staggered rate to ensure pollination. Two of the pistils were around full length with the anthers, another I had trouble getting to as it was much shorter, falling well short of the anthers, the other fell at the top edge of the anthers. This is strange!

Pic shows the pistil lengths.