Abstract
The tea plant has many flowers, but they almost drop off after flowering, and the fruiting-rate is 20-30% in the crossed flowers or 3-10% in the selfed flowers. To get the fundamental knowledge on the breeding and seed production of the tea plant, we investegated cytologically, in the crossed flowers aswell as selfed ones of the same tea plant, the growth of the pollen-tubes in the styles, the formation of the embryo-sacs and the prcdess of fertilization. In case of cross-pollination as well as of selfpollination the pollen grains germinated well on the stigmas within about one hour after pollination. But the growing-rates of the pollen-tubes were different between them. In crossed flowers the pollen-tubes grew rapidly afterwards and reached the base of the funiculus in about 36-40 hours after pollination, while in selfed flowers they grew uniformly arnd scarcely reached it even in about 72 hours.
