Now I feel obligated to counter respond to yumamelon's post. Triploid cucumis (Cucumbers, muskmelons, etc.) DO NOT need to be pollinated in order to set fruit. They are like triploid apples, which still will bear small little fruits if the blossoms don't get pollinated. (Unpollinated triploid apples aren't salable, but they can still be processed for cider. Just like triploid cucumbers, the unpollinated fruit will look different than the pollinated.) Triploid watermelons DO need to be pollinated, but because of the random arrangement of chromosomes, most of the seeds will be sterile. Even though they are marketed with the lie that they are seedless, everyone who has eaten one knows that it isn't seedless, just that most of the seeds are duds. Triploid cucumbers have been bred by what I described above since the early 1970's and are currently often grown in greenhouses in Europe. More info on the hybridizing can be found in the "Polyploidy in the Glasshouse Cucumber" article written by P. Grimbly of the Glasshouse Crops Research Institute, Sussex, England in the Journal Euphytica, Volume 22, Number 3, except in that article, Dr. Grimbly discusses soaking diploid seeds in colchicine, rather than injecting it into immature plants, but either way gets the same outcome, a tetraploid. Triploid muskmelons are hybridized in the same manner. After the Plant Biotechnology Group in Ibaraki, Japan experimented with the technique and published their findings in one of the Japanese breeding journals (I can't remember which one at the moment), many breeders started experimenting with triploid muskmelons and cantaloupes. They are not usually marketed as triploids, just that one can harvest earlier and the plants are more vigourous. Triploid cucumis usually have sterile pollen, so seeds are often shipped with a pollenizer (often the diploid parent). Triploid muskmelons have been grown for years, but growers do not prevent the pollination. They could, but one would end up with an immature fruit, similar to an unripe cucumber. They do not get a fruit that ripens earlier. It just sizes up and LOOKS ripe earlier, so it will often be cut from the plant before it is truly ripe. If allowed to actually ripen on the plant, the fruit would be about 1.5x normal size. It is easy for the buyer to check the melon to see whether it has been cut or slipped from the plant. Above, when writing about tasteless cantaloupes, I did not mean the slight bitterness of the fruit when grown in a too hot environment. I meant the unripe cucumber-like taste. Triploid snake malons (C. melo), the same species that muskmelons are a member of, are very commonly grown without pollination in a greenhouse. They are often sold as those 2 ft long seedless cucumbers, often wrapped in plastic instead of waxed.

Don't think I will be following the recommendations of a California retired corrections officer, that got her business degree on line and now professes to have all this various, so called scientific knowledge. Sequoia54, like you, I have a serious problem with anyone that says "say no to vaccines" and that alone leaves the rest of the info posted to be extremely suspect. nhbabs, I like to see scientific documentation and testing as well and not just so called claims to various things with no links to verify the info other the the original person making the claims. I need documentation, scientific testing and proof first. "considering what the world is facing with the Japan disaster". If you are referring to the risks of nuclear power, then you are talking about reality. If you are talking about serious problems in obtaining various products that are manufactured in Japan, then you are talking about reality. If you are talking about radiation from the Japanese nuclear power plants traveling around the world and creating havoc around the world, well, Then you are talking absurdity that is more than just ridiculous. It's outright outlandish and not true. As has been already stated "caveat lector." otherwise known as "reader beware. Fran

The amount of radiation and radioactive particles dumped by recent tests are minimal because those were deep underground. It was the above ground tests made during and following WW2 that dirtyed up the planet. I beleive that the major source of contamination in the last 30 years has been from nuclear power plant failures and on rare occasion, a return to earth of nuclear powered satellites. Most problems from satellite nuclear fuel has been from people who found pieces and handled them.

I was looking at the second set of photos when I counted 4 stigmas.The original photo seems to show 5.I did some reading and found out that in Onothera species the number of stigmas is always the same as the number of carpels, which is almost always 4,but that sometimes the number of carpels can be 2 or 5. I guess that explains why the flower in the original pic has 5 stigmas.It's not because of radiation,but instead variation.Sometimes things don't make sense because we/I don't have all the information.