Plant sex

Plant sex describes how flowers of different sexes are distributed across the individual plants of a species, independent of any single flower's own sex. A hermaphroditic plant bears only bisexual flowers throughout. A monoecious plant (Greek: 'one house') bears separate unisexual male and female flowers, but both on the same individual plant, as in coconut. A dioecious plant (Greek: 'two houses') bears male flowers on one individual and female flowers on an entirely separate individual, as in papaya and Palmyra palm. A polygamous plant bears a mixture of bisexual and unisexual (staminate/pistillate) flowers on the same plant, as in banana (Musa) and mango (Mangifera); this condition is further subdivided by exactly which combination of flower types occurs and on how many individuals - andromonoecious (male + bisexual flowers on one plant), gynomonoecious (female + bisexual on one plant), polygamomonoecious/trimonoecious (male + female + bisexual all on one plant), androdioecious (male flowers on one individual, bisexual on another), gynodioecious (female flowers on one individual, bisexual on anoth …