What is a flower?
A: A flower, sometimes known as a bloom or blossom, is the reproductive
structure found in flowering plants (plants of the division Angiospermae).
The biological function of a flower is to do what?
A: Facilitate reproduction, usually by providing a mechanism for the union
of sperm with eggs.
What are the two types of pollination?
A: Self-pollination and cross-pollination.
Self-pollination happens when the pollen from the
anther is what?
A: Deposited on the stigma of the same flower, or another flower on the same
plant.
What is Cross-pollination?
A: Cross-pollination is the transfer of pollen from the anther of one flower to
the stigma of another flower on a different individual of the same species.
Self-pollination happens in flowers where the stamen
and carpel do what?
A: Mature at the same time and are positioned so that the pollen can land on
the flower's stigma.
This pollination does not require an investment from
the plant to provide what?
A: Nectar and pollen as
food for pollinators.
Some flowers produce diaspores without what?
A: Fertilization (parthenocarpy).
Flowers contain sporangia and are the site where what
develop?
A: Gametophytes.
Many flowers have evolved to be attractive to
animals,
so as to cause them to do what?
A: To be vectors for the transfer of pollen.
After fertilization, the ovary of the flower develops
into what?
A: Fruit containing seeds.
In addition to facilitating the reproduction of
flowering plants, flowers have long been admired and used by humans for
what?
A: To bring beauty to the environment, and also as objects of romance,
ritual, esotericism, witchcraft, religion, medicine, and as a source of
food.
Flower is from the Middle English flour, which referred
to what?
A: Both the ground grain and the reproductive structure in plants, before
splitting off in the 17th century.
It comes originally from the Latin name of the Italian
what?
A: Goddess of flowers, Flora.
The early word for flower in English was what?
A: Blossom, though it now refers to flowers only of fruit trees.
The morphology of a flower, or its form and structure,
can be considered in what two parts?
A: The vegetative part, consisting of non-reproductive structures such as
petals; and the reproductive or sexual parts.
A stereotypical flower is made up of four kinds of
structures attached to the tip of a short stalk or axis, called a what?
A: A receptacle.
Each of these parts or floral organs is arranged in a
spiral called a what?
A: A whorl.
The four main whorls (starting from the base of the
flower or lowest node and working upwards) are what?
A: The calyx, corolla, androecium, and gynoecium.
Together the calyx and corolla make up the
non-reproductive part of the flower called the what?
A: The perianth, and in some cases may not be differentiated.
If this is the case, then they are described as what?
A: Tepals.
