What do flowering plants reproduce

Seeds are made when pollen from the male part of a flower reaches the ovule from the female part of a flower. It seems simple enough, but there are actually several different ways that plants can reproduce! In this article you will to learn about some of the methods of plant reproduction, as well as some of the advantages and disadvantages of these different modes of reproduction.

There are many reasons why it is important for scientists to study plant reproduction. For example, plants are very important for the foods you, your family, your friends, your teachers, and even your pets eat.

We can eat plants directly, like fruits and vegetables. We need plants for our other foods too, like the grass that cows eat to give us milk, cheese, and yogurt. By learning about the plants that we need for food, scientists can figure out how we can grow more of these plants, how to grow them more efficiently, and how to use less of valuable resources such as land and water, in the cultivation of these foods.

Other than food, can you think of more ways that we use plants? Self-fertilizing plants, known as selfers , make pollen that can fertilize their own ovules Figure 1A.

If a flower has both female and male parts, it is called hermaphroditic. Sometimes there are separate female and male flowers, but they are on the same plant. Monoecious plants are examples of selfers because they do not need two separate plants in order to reproduce.

How many of the selfers pictured in Figure 2 do you know? Cross-fertilizing plants, known as outcrossers , need two separate plants in order to reproduce. Sometimes, a flower can have both pollen and ovules, but they cannot fertilize each other; this is called self-incompatibility. For outcrossers to successfully reproduce, the pollen and ovules need to be from separate plants.

In other cases, the two sexes are completely separate, with some plants making only male flowers and other plants making only female flowers. This is similar to how reproduction works in most animals. The pollen from the male plants needs to travel to the ovules of the female plant in order to produce seeds. How many of the outcrossers pictured in Figure 2 do you know? There are still a lot of mysteries about how and why some types of outcrossers are dioecious.

Scientists decided to look at the DNA from many different kinds of dioecious plants to try to understand what makes them male or female. There is a lot you can learn from DNA that may not be so obvious from just looking at or growing a plant. A DNA sequence is a lot like letters on a keyboard: the letters by themselves do not mean anything, but when they are put together they can form words.

Scientists compared the genes from several dioecious plants to figure out which genes were important in determining whether a plant is male or female. They discovered that there are several ways a plant can determine gender.

For example, there can be genes in the DNA that make plants male or genes that prevent them from becoming female [ 1 ]. Looking at plant DNA is not the only way scientists can learn about the differences between male and female plants. For example, they can study the shape differences between male flowers and female flowers. You can do this too! Unlike humans, plants cannot move around. This means that plants need to use other strategies to move pollen to ovules to make seeds.

For outcrossers, the male plants do not need to spend their energy making seeds, so they can spend more energy on making and dispersing high-quality pollen. Similarly, since female plants do not need to make pollen, they can spend more energy on making high-quality ovules.

This means that they can pass on more resources to their offspring to improve their chances of survival. Furthermore, because dioecious plants need two different plants to reproduce, the offspring will have more variety in the genes they get from the parents. This is especially important if the environment changes, because the offspring with greater variety in their genes will be more likely to have genes that help them adapt to a new environment.

On the other hand, selfers, whose offspring only have genes from their one parent, would have less variety in their genes and might have more trouble adapting to environmental changes. In order to set fruit, male and female plants must be planted close enough together for pollination to occur. In some instances e. In the case of ginkgo, however, the fruit generally is not desirable due to its putrid smell when ripe. Kiwis are complicated because they may have one plant with bisexual flowers and another plant with only male flowers.

The plant world doesn't always have absolutes! Some plants bear only one flower per stem, which is called a solitary flower. Other plants produce an inflorescence —a cluster of flowers. Each flower in an inflorescence is called a floret. Most inflorescences belong to one of two groups: racemes and cymes. In the racemose group, the florets start blooming from the bottom of the stem and progress toward the top.

In a cyme , the top floret opens first and blooms progress downward along the peduncle. Detailed discussions of flower types are found in many botany textbooks. Pollination is the transfer of pollen from an anther to a stigma, either by wind or by pollinators.

Species pollinated by insects, animals or birds often have brightly colored or patterned flowers that contain fragrance or nectar. While searching for nectar, pollinators transfer pollen from flower to flower, either on the same plant or on different plants. Plants evolved this ingenious mechanism in order to ensure their species' survival. Wind-pollinated flowers often lack showy floral parts and nectar because they don't need to attract pollinators.

A chemical in the stigma stimulates pollen to grow a long tube down the style to the ovules inside the ovary. When pollen reaches the ovules, it releases sperm, and fertilization typically occurs. Fertilization is the union of a male sperm nucleus from a pollen grain with a female egg. If fertilization is successful, the ovule develops into a seed.

It is important to remember that pollination is no guarantee that fertilization will occur. Cross-fertilization combines genetic material from two parent plants. The resulting seed has a broader genetic base, which may enable the population to survive under a wider range of environmental conditions. Cross-pollinated plants usually are more successful than self-pollinated plants.

Consequently, more plants reproduce by cross-pollination than by self-pollination. Fruit consists of fertilized, mature ovules seeds plus the ovary wall, which may be fleshy, as in an apple, or dry and hard, as in an acorn. In some fruits, the seeds are enclosed within the ovary e. In others, seeds are situated on the outside of fruit tissue e.

The only part of the fruit that contains genes from both the male and female flowers are the seeds. The rest of the fruit arises from the maternal plant and is genetically identical to it.

Fruits are classified as simple , aggregate or multiple Figure Simple fruits develop from a single ovary. They include fleshy fruits such as cherries and peaches drupe , pears and apples pome and tomatoes berries. Although generally referred to as a vegetable, tomatoes technically are a fruit because they develop from a flower.

Squash, cucumbers, and eggplants also develop from a single ovary and are classified botanically as fruits. Other types of simple fruit are dry.

Their wall is either papery or leathery and hard, as opposed to the fleshy examples just mentioned. Examples are peanuts legume , poppies capsule , maples samara and walnuts nut. An aggregate fruit develops from a single flower with many ovaries, such as with strawberries, raspberries and blackberries. The flower is a simple flower with one corolla, one calyx and one stem, but it has many pistils or ovaries.

Each ovary is fertilized separately. If some ovules are not pollinated successfully, the fruit will be misshapen. Multiple fruits are derived from a tight cluster of separate, independent flowers borne on a single structure. Each flower has its own calyx and corolla. Pineapples and figs are examples.

A seed contains all of the genetic information needed to develop into an entire plant. It is made up of three parts Figure 22 :. Germination is when a seed embryo goes from a dormant state to an active, growing state Figure Before any visual signs of germination appear, the seed must absorb water through its seed coat.

It also must have enough oxygen and a favorable temperature. Some species, such as celery, also require light. Others require darkness. If these requirements are met, the radicle is the first part of the seedling to emerge from the seed. It develops into the primary root and grows downward in response to gravity.

From this primary root, root hairs and lateral roots develop. Between the radicle and the first leaflike structure is the hypocotyl , which grows upward in response to light. Because seeds are reproductive structures and thus important to a species' survival, plants have evolved many mechanisms to ensure their survival.

The seed leaves, or cotyledons , encase the embryo. They usually are shaped differently than the leaves the mature plant will produce. Monocots produce one cotyledon, while dicots produce two. One such mechanism is seed dormancy. Dormancy comes in two forms: seed coat dormancy and embryo dormancy. In seed coat dormancy , a hard seed coat does not allow water to penetrate.

Redbud, locust and many other ornamental trees and shrubs exhibit this type of dormancy. A process called scarification is used to break or soften the seed coat. In nature, scarification is accomplished by means such as the heat of a forest fire, digestion of the seed by a bird or mammal, or partial breakdown of the seed coat by fungi or insects. It can be done mechanically by nicking the seed coat with a file, or chemically by softening the seed coat with sulfuric acid.

In either instance, it is important to not damage the embryo. Embryo dormancy is common in ornamental plants, including elm and witch hazel. These seeds must go through a chilling period before germinating. To break this type of dormancy, stratification is used. The length of time required varies by species. Even when environmental requirements for seed germination are met and dormancy is broken, other factors also affect germination:.

Many weed seeds are able to germinate quickly and under less than optimal conditions. This is one reason they make such formidable opponents in the garden. As you clean the fireplace, do your plants a favor and sprinkle the ashes in the garden instead of throwing them in the garbage.

Oct 22, News story. Gardeners tend to think of fall as the time to put bulbs in the ground, but the warm soil and increasing moisture make it a great time to plant most anything. Information about garden planning, maintenance, cleanup, pest management, houseplants and indoor gardening for the month of November. Information about garden planning, maintenance and clean up, pest monitoring and management, houseplants, and indoor gardening for the month of October. Kym Pokorny Mar 9, News story. As Oregon gardeners have noticed, our climate is changing.

This is primarily due to human activities releasing excessive greenhouse gases into the atmosphere over the last years. Spider mites are common, tiny garden pests, related to spiders and ticks.