What Purpose Does the Flower Serve for the Plant?
Humans often associate flowers with romance, perhaps with good reason -- flowers, like human genitalia, are reproductive structures. While human and plant reproduction are very different, there are also certain similarities as well. Does this Spark an idea?
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Function
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Flowers are reproductive structures found in angiosperms, better known as flowering plants. Like humans, flowering plants propagate by sexual reproduction, whereby a sperm cell fertilizes an egg cell to form a diploid zygote. In a plant, however, the zygote will develop into a seed, while a human zygote develops into a fetus.
Features
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Most flowers produce both pollen and egg cells, although flowers of some species are either female or male. The pollen contains a germ cell that will divide to give rise to two sperm; once the pollen lands on the stigma of a flower, it will develop a pollen tube through which the sperm can travel to fertilize an egg.
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Considerations
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Unlike humans, plants can't move and hence cannot seek out and choose mates. Consequently, flowering plants have evolved various strategies to facilitate pollination. Some plants are wind-pollinated; flowers of these plants tend to be small, dull and inconspicuous. Other plants lure insects or animals with scent or sugary nectar; as the animal retrieves the nectar from the flower it unwittingly picks up a payload of pollen it will later transfer to another flower elsewhere.
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References
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