Question

What is a flower? Describe the parts of a typical angiosperm flower.

Answer 1

Hint: Flowers are the objects of aesthetic, social, ornamental, religious and cultural value. It is always used by humans as a symbol for conveying their feelings such as love, affection, happiness, grief and mourning.

Complete answer:
Flower is the part of the angiosperm plant that acts as a reproductive part of the plant. It is the part bearing androecium (male reproductive organ) or gynoecium (female reproductive organ) or sometimes having both androecium and gynoecium within the same flower (i.e. called as dioecious plant).

The male reproductive organ is androecium i.e. having stamen that can be one or more in number depending upon the species of plant. The length of stamen also varies depending upon the species of the plant. Stamen consists of 2 parts that are filament (the long and slender stalk) and the anther (the terminally bilobed structure). Anther is the site where the pollen grains are present. Pollen grains act as a male gamete that is responsible for the reproduction in the flowering plant.

The female reproductive organ is gynoecium that may consist of a single pistil (monocarpellary) or more than one pistil (multicarpellary). Each pistil has three parts that are the stigma (serves as a landing platform for pollen grains), style (elongated slender part beneath the stigma) and ovary (the basal bulged part of the ovary. The ovary is the ovule in which embryo sac or female gamete is present.

Besides these two reproductive organs, some other structures are also present that are sepal (calyx) and petal (corolla). Calyx of the flower acts as a platform for the androecium and gynoecium and typically functions as protection for the flower in bud. Corolla of the flower is colorful in nature and helps in attracting insects that are responsible for pollination.

Note:Calyx and corolla are usually separated from each other and can be easily differentiated but some families like Liliaceae have petaloid sepals in which petals and sepals cannot be differentiated from each other easily. When the reproduction takes place in the plant then the flower gets transformed into fruits and the calyx and corolla falls off.