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What causes flower reproduction?
Question Date: 2016-04-20
Answer 1:

Some plants make flowers to help with reproduction. The flowers can have just female parts, just male parts, or both. Most of the flowers you know probably have both.

The male parts make pollen. The female parts make ovules (eggs). The flowers usually have some way to attract animals to pollinate them. The pollinators may be bees, moths, birds (especially hummingbirds), bats, or other animals. The animals are attracted to the flowers and drink their nectar (sugar water). When they are drinking, they get coated with pollen. When they go to the next flower, that pollen is spread to the egg cells of the next plant. Each fertilized ovule becomes a seed.

Flowers can use smells, colors, patterns, and other signals to attract pollinators. Some plants are pollinated by flies. They can smell like rotting dead things. The flies like it.

Why should flowering plants go to all the trouble to use pollinators? Well, if they didn’t exchange pollen, all of their seeds would be pretty much alike. If the environment for the next generation changed in a way that was not good for the parent plant, it wouldn’t be good for any of their offspring either.

Why do you think it helps the plant if the pollinator specializes on only their species?

You may want to study plant ecology.

Thanks for asking,


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