Crossword-Solution: ONONIS 6 letters, 1 clue 🏆 scrabble score: 6

Some of the species, for instance Ononis columnae, bear a fresh crop of cleistogamic flowers in the autumn.

That these flowers owe their structure primarily to the arrested development of perfect ones, we may infer from such cases as that of the lower rudimentary petal in Viola being larger than the others, like the lower lip of the perfect flower,--from a vestige of a spur in the cleistogamic flowers of Impatiens,-- from the ten stamens of Ononis being united into a tube,--and other such structures.

But of such invigoration I have only a small amount of direct evidence: two crossed seedlings of Ononis minutissima were put into competition with two seedlings raised from cleistogamic flowers; they were at first all of equal height; the crossed were then slightly beaten; but on the following year they showed the usual superiority of their class, and were to the self-fertilised plants of cleistogamic origin as 100 to 88 in mean height.

This occurred in the plainest manner with the seeds of Papaver vagum and Delphinium consolida, and less plainly with those of Adonis aestivalis and Ononis minutissima.

Lastly, only four plants of the Ononis minutissima were raised; but as these were observed during their whole growth, the advantage of the crossed over the self-fertilised plants may, I think, be fully trusted.