Flower

Flower

A flower, sometimes known as a bloom or blossom, is the reproductive structure found in flowering plants (plants of the division Magnoliophyta, also called angiosperms). The biological function of a flower is to effect reproduction, usually by providing a mechanism for the union of sperm with eggs. Flowers may facilitate outcrossing (fusion of sperm and eggs from different individuals in a population) or allow selfing (fusion of sperm and egg from the same flower). Some flowers produce diaspores without fertilization (parthenocarpy). Flowers contain sporangia and are the site where gametophytes develop. Flowers give rise to fruit and seeds. Many flowers have evolved to be attractive to animals, so as to cause them to be vectors for the transfer of pollen.

Read more about Flower.

Famous quotes containing the word flower:

    and men strive with each other not for power or the accumulation of paper
    but in joy create for others the house, the poem, the game of
    athletic beauty.

    Then washed in the brightness of the vision,
    I saw how in its radiance would grow and be nourished and suddenly
    burst into terrible and splendid bloom
    the blood-red flower of revolution.
    Dudley Randall (b. 1914)

    The light passes
    from ridge to ridge,
    from flower to flower
    Hilda Doolittle (1886–1961)

    But the flower leaned aside
    And thought of naught to say,
    And morning found the breeze
    A hundred miles away.
    Robert Frost (1874–1963)