Breeding of Vegetable, Spice and Tuber Crops

Heteromorphic flowers

The flowers are perfect but come in two structural types; for example

1. Long stamens with a short style
2. Short stamens with a long style

• A single plant has one type or the other.
• If the pollinator has a short tongue, pollination is favoured from the first type to the second - but not the reverse.
• Heteromorphic flowers are not common, and even in the angiosperm families that favour them (e.g., primroses, flax), the same biochemical mechanisms of self-incompatibility that we will find (below) in homomorphic flowers are usually present as well