Botany · Ch 4 — Reproductive Morphology
Flower
Flower
The flower is angiosperms' single most diagnostic feature and their means of sexual reproduction - essentially a highly modified, condensed shoot whose growth, unlike a vegetative shoot's, is determinate (it stops once the flower is fully formed). While flowers carry deep cultural and aesthetic significance - as symbols of respect, affection and celebration - their u …
What this figure shows. A labelled longitudinal diagram of a generalised flower showing, from outside in: bract (the subtending leaf-like structure) and bracteole (a smaller bract on the pedicel, with a whorl of bracteoles at the base of the calyx called an epicalyx); the pedicel (flower stalk, with a flower being pedicellate or sessile, and a short-stalked flower called subsessile); the thalamus (torus or receptacle) on which the other floral parts are borne; the calyx (outermost whorl, unit sepal); the corolla (unit petal); or, where calyx and corolla are undifferentiated, the perianth (unit tepal); the androeciu …