Is a Sunflower an Angiosperm?
A North American native plant, sunflowers produce large flower heads packed with seeds used for consumption, bird and squirrel feed, and for their oil. Grow sunflowers in the back of the home garden where their large flowers heads born on thick, tall stalks create an attractive backdrop for other plants. Does this Spark an idea?
Other People Are Reading
-
Types of plants
-
Scientists divide plants into many different categories based on whether they grow in water or on land; whether they have vascular systems; and whether they lose their leaves, like deciduous plants, or don't, like evergreens. Scientists also consider whether the plant is seed-producing or is seedless. Ferns are seedless plants reproducing via spores, while sunflowers produce abundant large seeds. The sunflower seed head can reach a foot across and the seeds reach 3/8 inch long.
Gymnosperms
-
Gymnosperms and angiosperms both produce seeds. Gymnosperms, the more primitive form of the seed-producing plants, have naked seeds -- they have no protective fruit surrounding the seed. A conifer is a type of gymnosperm; when it produces seeds, it grows two types of cones. The male cone is a flimsy, papery cone that disintegrates easily once it is releases its pollen. The female cone is a tough, persistent cone that contains the female organs and produces a naked seed. Gymnosperms include pines, ginkgo and junipers, among others. Sunflowers do not have cones or other gymnosperm reproductive seed mechanisms and are not gymnosperms.
-
Angiosperms
-
Some angiosperms protect their seeds by creating a fleshy fruit that surrounds the seeds, although a few fruits, such as strawberries, produce seeds on the outside. Other angiosperms develop hard seed coats, such as nuts like acorns, while others, like the maple tree, produce samaras. Other characteristics of angiosperms involve the vascular system of the plant, its sieve elements and double fertilization. Additionally, all angiosperms have flowers and all flowering plants -- including the sunflower -- are angiosperms. Sometimes the flowers are quite small, green and inconspicuous. Other times the flowers are quite large, as in the case of sunflowers.
Sunflowers
-
The ovaries of a sunflower do not produce a fleshy fruit or a nut, but instead become the shell of the sunflower seed. Like the strawberry, sunflowers are achenes. Achenes are a dry rather than fleshy fruit and have one seed per fruit. In addition, the sunflower seed is indehiscent because it does not split open when ripe.
-
References
Resources
- Photo Credit Jupiterimages/Comstock/Getty Images
