Q.Examine a few flowers of any cucurbit plant and try to identify the staminate and pistillate flowers. Do you know any other plant that bears unisexual flowers?

Cucurbits (the family that includes cucumber, pumpkin, bottle gourd, watermelon, and related plants) are monoecious — meaning a single plant bears both types of unisexual flowers separately: staminate (male) flowers and pistillate (female) flowers.

• Staminate (male) flower: Contains only the androecium (stamens), which produce pollen; it lacks a functional pistil/ovary. It is typically borne on a relatively slender flower stalk, and in most cucurbits, staminate flowers are usually more numerous than pistillate flowers on the plant.
• Pistillate (female) flower: Contains only the gynoecium (pistil — ovary, style, stigma); it lacks functional stamens. It can usually be identified even before the petals open by the presence of a small, swollen structure (the inferior ovary) situated just below the base of the petals — a feature not seen in the staminate flower.

By examining a few flowers from a cucurbit plant (e.g., a cucumber or bottle gourd vine) and looking for the presence/absence of the swollen ovary beneath the petals, one can distinguish pistillate flowers from staminate ones.

Other plants bearing unisexual flowers:

• Papaya (Carica papaya) — a dioecious plant, where male and female flowers occur on separate individual plants (i.e., there are distinct 'male plants' and 'female plants'). …

Recall that cucurbits are monoecious, then distinguish staminate (stamens only, no ovary swelling) from pistillate (pistil only, visible swollen ovary below the petals) flowers, and …

• Confusing monoecious (both flower types on the SAME plant, as in cucurbits/maize) with dioecious (separate male and female PLANTS, as in papaya).
• Forgetting the key identification cue for a pistillate flower — the visible swollen (inferior) ovary below the petals. …