Flowers: Key learnings

I don't think I can call these KEY learnings.... more like COOL learnings..... just a hodge podge of discoveries from last week's discussion about flowers.   I remember learning some of this stuff back in high school but didn't appreciate the wonders of it all.......now time has changed my perspective.

• There are two groups of plants that produce seeds:  Gymnosperms ("naked - seeds") - conifers, and Angiosperms ("house - seeds") - plants that flower and produce seeds inside a fruit.
  
• A flower is the reproductive organ of a seed-producing plant that flowers.
  
  

• The male sex parts of a flower consist of the filament (stalk) and anther (pollen container).  You can see that quite clearly in the photo of this lily - those white stalks with brown heads on them.
  
• The female sex parts consists of the stigma (tip), style (stalk) and ovary (base).  In the photo of this lily it's that pale, slightly swollen yellow stalk in the center of the flower.
  
• Take a look at this sunflower..... look closely..... what do you see?
  
  
  
  
  
  ..... those petals are not really petals.... each one is a complete female flower.... and the center part is really hundreds of itty, bitty male flowers. So what you're really looking at is a community of flowers, not just one single flower head. All members of the ASTERACEAE family have this characteristic.... so that includes plants like daisies, chrysanthemums, and purple cone flowers....architectural wonders!
  
• Think of all the things you eat that contain seeds - melons, cucumbers, squash, peppers, apples, berries, okra and the like.  Technically, ALL of these things are fruits, and in plant-speak, a fruit is the mature ovary.  It's the ovary that produces the plant's babies - the seeds.  You can see how this process works in the following sequence of photos. 

Here we have the flower of a yellow squash.....

The flower gets pollinated and the ovary at the base of the flower then starts to swell and mature......baby seeds growing inside.

Eventually the flower dies and drops off and the ovary continues to grow into the fruit,  in this case a yellow squash, containing the seeds of the next generation.

• Some orchid species, in order to take advantage of a prolific pollinator, have evolved in color/shape to become dead ringers of a female insect.  Along comes the male and sees what to him looks like a gorgeous female and yes, you guessed it..... as he's having his jollies he gets covered in the orchid's pollen. When his little tryst is done, off he flies looking for the next gorgeous female, taking the pollen with him.... and so goes the reproductive life cycle of an orchid.  Wonder if the insect ever figures out what's going on?!
  
• And finally...... ever wondered what makes plants grow towards the light?  It's a hormone called Auxin.   Auxin stimulates growth, but is destroyed by light.  So, the shady side of a plant produces more Auxin which stimulates more plant cells to grow on that side, forcing the plant to grow unevenly.... and grow towards the light.  Cool huh?  Share that at your next cocktail party!

Flowers...... what diverse, intricate, beautifully engineered, deceiving marvels of mother nature they are!