Answer 1:
There is no simple answer to that. The
scientifically correct answer is buttercups,
although the common English (and scientifically
incorrect) answer is sunflowers.
The family that has the truest petals is the
buttercup family, the Ranunculaceae. Those flowers
can vary in the number of petals, even within a
species, but ten-twelve is a common number.
However, in some of the more primitive flowering
plants, the level of leaves just underneath the
petals (the "sepals") are not fully distinguished
from the petals (both are modified leaves). Some
of these plants, such as the magnolia family, the
Magnoliaceae, can have many more "petals" than the
buttercups. Finally, there is the sunflower
family, the Asteraceae (which includes daisies,
thistles, etc.); their "petals" are actually
miniature flowers that surround a large, central
disk, which is in turn made up of a different kind
of flower. Individual flowers of this family
actually have only five petals, which are
frequently fused into a single unit, but a single
head of these flowers can itself contain hundreds
or thousands of these individual, five-petaled
flowers.
It is also of note that the sepals of the
monocots (grasses, palms, lilies, and their
relatives) are generally brightly colored and thus
appear to be "petals", but they're not. If you
look carefully, you will find that three of the
brightly-colored leaves are above the other three;
the three above are the true petals and the three
below are the sepals. Look at an iris for one good
example.
|
Answer 2:
This gets really complicated because of the
nature of some of the more primitive types of
flowers.
Flowers normally have two levels of petal-like
structures, called whorls. The inner whorl, which
we normally call petals, is brightly colored in
most flowers, while the outer whorl, called
sepals, is usually green. This is only true of the
more advanced flowering plants, however; in
lilies, both the sepals and the petals are
brightly colored, and in magnolias, there are more
than two of these whorls, all of which are
brightly colored.
In advanced flowers, the number of petals per
whorl is usually five, sometimes four, but in more
primitive flowering plants, it's usually three
(this is understood in lilies, and I've seen it in
magnolias, too), assuming that you can even call
what magnolias have petals (and not sepals, or
something else). Your classic magnolia flower has
three whorls of three parts each, so you could say
that's nine, or just three, depending on your
definition of what's a petal and what's a sepal.
Even more primitive flowers, like water lilies,
don't even have their "petals" in whorls.
And then, you have the sunflower family, some
of the most advanced "flowers", which aren't
really flowers at all - each of the things on a
sunflower or a daisy that looks like a petal is
actually a separate flower, and the whole thing is
a composite structure called an inflorescence. If
you look closely at any of the "petals" of a
sunflower, for example, you will notice five lobes
- the five petals of the flower that it is, fused
together.
And then you have conifers - pines and their
relatives - which don't have flowers at all, but
have cones that have a lot of the same
characteristics of flowers.
Click Here to return to the search form.
|