Flowers Fruits And Seeds

Flower  that is, those that are beautiful or fragrant, or both  have always had a strong appeal for mankind. Poets of every age have praised them. Roses, tulips, gladioli, azaleas, chrysanthemums, phlox and a host of other plants are cultivate for their showy flowers. Experts are constantly seeking to improve upon nature by making blossoms larger, more showy and more fragrant. The arrangement of flowers is an esteemed art. In the scheme of nature, however, a flower is more than an object of beauty. It is a reproductive organ, by means of which a plant carries on its kind. The most beautiful and fragrant of the flowers are concerned with this task. So are inconspicuous flowers, such as those of the ragweed, and ill smelling flowers, such as we find in the skunk cabbage and the Dutchman's pipe. The only plants whose reproductive processes are centered in flowers are the angiosperms, or flowering plants, which are the most highly evolved of all. In the flowers of angiosperms, as in the reproductive organs of the higher animals, a new organ-ism arises when an egg is fertilized by a sperm. There is an important difference, however. In the higher animals the re-productive organs produce the sex cells eggs and sperm directly. The reproductive organs of flowering plants produce spores first; then egg and sperm cells develop from the spores. The visible plant of an angiosperm  an oak tree, or a rose bush or a lilac represents the spore producing stage. The sexual stage is rep-resented only by the short span between the formation of spores and the production of sex cells by the spores shortly after their formation. Each flower originates in a bud, just as leafy  shoots do.various sequestration methods science daily. In the leafy shoot, leaves arise in the bud as minute projections at the sides of a dome shaped or slightly flattened stem tip, or growing point. In many plants the same stem tip that forms leaves changes later into a floral structure. It produces the small lateral  projections that will develop into floral organs, in much the same way that it formed the young leaves. What determines whether a plant will put forth leaves or flowers? Various factors are involved. To yield flowers there must be ample stores of food in the plant, in the form of proteins and carbohydrates. Likewise certain hormones, called florins, must be produced. Florins arise in many plants after a certain age has been reached. In such cases the plant turns to flowering after it has produced a certain number of leaves.