Often we display flowers in vases as a way to beautify the home, or display them in wrappings as a gift (very popular for birthdays, dates and holidays), but have you stopped to think that flowers, the bloom that is so enchanting and beautiful with many a variety of colors that women like to stick their noses in and inhale deeply and say "how wonderful that smells" is actually the reproductive organ of the plant? < Yes, very much like the penis of a man and the vagina of a woman.
The bloom of a plant (or as many others like to call them, the flower) has but one intention, to reproduce, the beauty of flowers is a mere side affect of their endeavors to reproduce. As I've seen on a couple of my grows in the garden the bloom is often followed by the vegetables, the flowers often is pushed out. This lead me to a curiosity of the plant blooms themselves, the structure and the workings, it seemed pretty important to know the basics of especially as a grower.
Here is the interesting information I found on on Wikipedia...
The biological function of a flower is to effect reproduction, usually by providing a mechanism for the union of sperm with eggs. Since the flowers are the reproductive organs of plant, they mediate the joining of the sperm, contained within pollen to the ovules - contained within the ovary. Pollination is the movement of pollen from the anthers to the stigma. The joining of the sperm to the ovules is called fertilization. Normally pollen is moved from one plant to another, but many plants are able to self pollinate.
A stereotypical flower consists of four kinds of structures attached to the tip of a short stalk. Each of these kinds of parts is arranged in a whorl [a circular arrangement of like parts, as leaves or flowers, around a point on an axis, shaped like a coil completing a full circle, Dictionary] on the receptacle. The four main whorls (starting from the base of the flower to lowest node and working upwards) are as follows:
- Calyx - the outermost whorl consisting of units called sepals; these are typically green and enclose the rest of the flower in the bud stage, however, they can be absent or prominent and petal-like in some species.
- Corolla - the next whorl toward the apex, composed of units called petals, which are typically thin, soft and colored to attract animals that help the process of pollination.
- Androecium (from Greek andros oikia: "man's house") - the next whorl (sometimes multiplied into several whorls), consisting of units called stamens. Stamens consist of two parts: a stalk called a filament, topped by an anther where pollen is produced by meiosis and eventually dispersed.
- Gynoecium (from Greek gynaikos oikia: "woman's house") - the innermost whorl of a flower, consisting of one or more units calls carpels. The carpel or multiple fused carpels form a hollow structure called an ovary, which produces ovules [plant part that contains the embryo sac, the female germ cell which after fertilization develops into a seed, Dictionary] internally. Ovules are megasporangia and they in turn produce megaspores by meiosis which develop into female gametophytes. These give rise to egg cells. The gynoecium of a flower is also described using an alternative terminology wherein the structure one sees in the innermost whorl (consisting of an ovary, style and stigma) is called a pistil. A pistil may consist of a single carpel or a number of carpels fused together. The sticky tip of the pistil, the stigma, is the receptor of pollen. The supportive stalk, the style, becomes the pathway for pollen tubes to grow from pollen grains adhering to the stigma.
Pollen may be transferred between plants via a number of 'vectors'. Some plants make use of abiotic vectors - namely wind or, much less commonly, water. Others use biotic vectors including insects, birds, bats, or other animals. Flowers of plants that make use of biotic pollen vectors commonly have glands called nectaries that act as an incentive for animals to visit the flower. Some flowers have patterns, called nectar guides, that show pollinators where to look for nectar. Flowers also attract pollinators by scent and color. Still other flowers use mimicry to attract pollinators. Some species of orchids, for example, produce flowers resembling female bees in color, shape and scent.
*Read the full article on flowers on Wikipedia
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