Anatomic Study of Female Sterility of Pinus tabulaeformis Carr.

The anatomic research on the mutant clone of Pinus tabulaeformis Carr. in the seed orchard in Xingcheng, Liaoning Province was carried out. The female cone of the mutant clone looked like normal, but its ovules degenerated in the early stage. This paper tries to find out the reason and time of ovule abortion. It seems that the ovule abortion is probably caused by female sterility because the microspores of this mutant clone were normal. Through the serial observations on the one-year-old macrosporangiates and the ovules of two-year-old female cones of mutant and normal clone, it is found that the reason of ovule abortion in mutant clone is the failure of the mitosis of free nuclei in the female gametophyte, and the time is about in the early April.