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Plant sex…Its really wild
By John | January 18, 2008
Flowering plants have evolved one of the most complex and “sexiest” life cycles on earth. In fact, they have “double fertilization” involving two sperm rather than the usual one. In a mature seed, the embryo originates from a zygote formed by the fusion of sperm #1 with an egg inside the embryo sac. Sperm #2 fuses with the two polar nuclei forming the nutrient-rich endosperm tissue. When you consume coconut meat, coconut milk or popcorn you are eating endosperm. In the case of popcorn, the endosperm has exploded due to the pressure build-up inside the grain. Botanists have devised all sorts of terms to explain plant sexuality including unisexual, bisexual, asexual, self-fertile, self-sterile and polygamous. At least 90% of all flowering plants have bisexual flowers containing male and female organs. Many of these species avoid inbreeding and incest by having their sex organs mature at different times. In protogyny the female organ is receptive before the male is mature, and in protandry the male is ready before the female is receptive. This cleaver strategy favors cross pollination between different individuals. Some plants have only unisexual flowers and are dioecious with separate male and female individuals in the population–like date palms, edible figs, willows, cottonwoods, marijuana and people. The term homosexual is probably not politically correct for plants, although many plants are unisexual with flowers of only one sex. Poison oak is essentially dioecious, but it may also be polygamous with bisexual and unisexual flowers on the same individual. Figs are especially interesting because they have tiny unisexual male and female flowers inside a fleshy structure called a syconium. A minute female wasp squeezes into the syconium to pollinate the flowers and lay her eggs. After a few months, the new generation of wasps have an orgy inside the syconium and fertile females exit and start the entire cycle over again.
Topics: Flora & Fauna, Garden Furniture |
