Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Hylocereus undatus, a hermaphrodite plant with perfect flowers that have both functional carpels and stamens. The term hermaphrodite is used in botany to describe, for example, a perfect flower that has both staminate (male, pollen-producing) and carpellate (female, ovule-producing) parts. The overwhelming majority of flowering plant species ...
Close-up of a Schlumbergera flower, showing part of the gynoecium (specifically the stigma and part of the style) and the stamens that surround it. Plant reproductive morphology is the study of the physical form and structure (the morphology) of those parts of plants directly or indirectly concerned with sexual reproduction.
Female (a.k.a. pistillate) flowers only have a pistil. Hermaphrodite (a.k.a. perfect, or bisexual) flowers have both a stamen and pistil. The sex of a single flower may differ from the sex of the whole organism: for example, a plant may have both staminate and pistillate flowers, making the plant as a whole a hermaphrodite.
In plants, individual flowers are called dichogamous if their function has the two sexes separated in time, although the plant as a whole may have functionally male and functionally female flowers open at any one moment. A flower is protogynous if its function is first female, then male, and protandrous if its function is first male then female.
It can be seen that the flower is hermaphrodite and actinomorphic, pentacyclic (i.e., it has 5 floral whorls) and pentamerous (each cycle is composed of five pieces). The floral diagram is a graphic representation of the arrangement of the floral parts and the arrangement of the different whorls, in a cross section of the flower. Each whorl is ...
For example, male inflorescence in plants often produce more flowers than females . Furthermore, pollen export and ultimately paternity, often increases with flower number, even for plants with hermaphroditic flowers. Retention of older flowers with no pollinator rewards can lead to increased pollinator visitation rate and increased pollen removal.
The balancing selection leads to cycles that explain the normal sex ratios in gynodioecious populations. The second scenario, known as epidemic dynamics, involves the arrival and loss of new cytoplasmic male sterility genes in new populations. These are the same genes that invade hermaphrodite populations and eventually result in gynodioecy. [6]
Among flowering plants with unisexual flowers, some also produce hermaphrodite flowers, and the three types may occur in different arrangements on the same or separate plants. Plant species can thus be hermaphrodite, monoecious, dioecious, trioecious, polygamomonoecious, polygamodioecious, andromonoecious, or gynomonoecious.