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Plants may either self-pollinate or cross-pollinate. In 2013, flowers dating from the Cretaceous (100 million years before present) were found encased in amber, the oldest evidence of sexual reproduction in a flowering plant. Microscopic images showed tubes growing out of pollen and penetrating the flower's stigma.
At least three aspects of flowers appear to have coevolved between flowering plants and insects, because they involve communication between these organisms. Firstly, flowers communicate with their pollinators by scent; insects use this scent to determine how far away a flower is, to approach it, and to identify where to land and finally to feed.
Plants that are not flowering plants (green algae, mosses, liverworts, hornworts, ferns and gymnosperms such as conifers) also have complex interplays between morphological adaptation and environmental factors in their sexual reproduction. The breeding system, or how the sperm from one plant fertilizes the ovum of another, depends on the ...
Plant reproduction is the production of new offspring in plants, which can be accomplished by sexual or asexual reproduction. Sexual reproduction produces offspring by the fusion of gametes, resulting in offspring genetically different from either parent.
Marsupial koalas of Australia have evolved fingerprints, indistinguishable from those of non-related primates, such as humans. [14] The Australian honey possums acquired a long tongue for taking nectar from flowers, a structure similar to that of butterflies, some moths, and hummingbirds, and used to accomplish the same task. [15]
Sexual dimorphism is common in dioecious plants [21]: 403 and dioicous species. [22]: 71 Males and females in insect-pollinated species generally look similar to one another because plants provide rewards (e.g. nectar) that encourage pollinators to visit another similar flower, completing pollination.
The identification of plant fossils in Cambrian strata is an uncertain area in the evolutionary history of plants because of the small and soft-bodied nature of these plants. It is also difficult in a fossil of this age to distinguish among various similar appearing groups with simple branching patterns, and not all of these groups are plants.
In other plants, such as hazel, some flowers have only stamens, others only carpels, but the same plant (i.e. sporophyte) has both kinds of flower and so is monoecious. Flowers of European holly, a dioecious species: male above, female below (leaves cut to show flowers more clearly)