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7 views2 pages

For Other Uses

Uploaded by

noonecaresaboutfloch
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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For other uses, see Flower (disambiguation).

"Floral" redirects here. For other uses, see Floral (disambiguation).

A flower, also known as a bloom or blossom, is the reproductive structure found


in flowering plants (plants of the division Angiospermae). Flowers consist of a
combination of vegetative organs – sepals that enclose and protect the developing
flower, petals that attract pollinators, and reproductive organs that
produce gametophytes, which in flowering plants produce gametes. The male
gametophytes, which produce sperm, are enclosed within pollen grains produced in
the anthers. The female gametophytes are contained within the ovules produced in
the carpels.

Most flowering plants depend on animals, such as bees, moths, and butterflies, to
transfer their pollen between different flowers, and have evolved to attract
these pollinators by various strategies, including brightly colored, conspicuous petals,
attractive scents, and the production of nectar, a food source for pollinators.[1] In this
way, many flowering plants have co-evolved with pollinators to be mutually dependent
on services they provide to one another—in the plant's case, a means of reproduction;
in the pollinator's case, a source of food.[2]

When pollen from the anther of a flower is deposited on the stigma, this is
called pollination. Some flowers may self-pollinate, producing seed using pollen from a
different flower of the same plant, but others have mechanisms to prevent self-
pollination and rely on cross-pollination, when pollen is transferred 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 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 nectar and pollen as
food for pollinators.[3] Some flowers produce diaspores without fertilization
(parthenocarpy). After fertilization, the ovary of the flower develops
into fruit containing seeds.

Flowers have long been appreciated by humans for their beauty and pleasant scents,
and also hold cultural significance as religious, ritual, or symbolic objects, or sources
of medicine and food.

Etymology
Flower is from the Middle English flour, which referred to 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 goddess of flowers, Flora. The early word for
flower in English was blossom,[4] though it now refers to flowers only of fruit trees.[5]

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