Bouquet of Flowers by Bryan Hendricks Some are pretty and some are plain, but all flowers exist to reproduce plants. Of life's special treats, few are as satisfying as biting into a fresh apple. Sometimes an apple can be so juicy you don't know whether to drink or chew. After you've munched around it, you throw away the hard, seed-filled core. Unless the apple core lands where the seeds in it can sprout, your toss spells the end of an apple tree's attempt to reproduce. The attempt started with a flower. Many fruits we enjoy, such as pears and peaches, also begin with a flower. Over the next few weeks, their beautiful pink and white blossoms will decorate Missouri's orchards, heralding the promise of spring and a brand new fruit crop. Many other plants, including wildflowers, trees and vegetables-even the grass in your backyard-sprout flowers. Some flowers are showy and some are so tiny you can hardly see them, but all flowers serve the same purpose: to produce new plants. "In terms of reproduction, there are two kinds of flowers," said Tim Smith, botanist for the Missouri Department of Conservation. "They're called perfect and imperfect flowers." The "perfect" flower, said Smith, has both male and female parts. "Imperfect" flowers contain only male or only female parts. "There's just an endless variety of flowers," Smith said. "If you studied a typical flower, you'd find out real quickly that all those parts are not always present, and they're not always shaped like they are in science book illustrations." The male part, called the stamen, has an anther on a stalk. The anther produces pollen. The female part, called the pistil, contains three parts: the ovary, the style and the stigma. The ovary is at the base. The style is like a stalk. At the top of the stalk is the stigma. Pollen from the anther or another flower's anther lands on the stigma, germinates and makes its way down into the ovary. Inside the ovary are ovules. Each one of these that gets fertilized becomes a seed. The ovary becomes a fruit. Botanically, a fruit is a mature ovary containing seeds. The apple core is the seed pod of an apple tree. The apple flesh that you eat is additional tissue surrounding the seed pod. Acorn clusters are the seed pods of an oak tree. The tomato is the seed pod of the tomato plant. Some fruits, like the apple, originate from "perfect" flowers that look the way you expect flowers to look. Other flowers don't really look like flowers at all. That's a flower? COOL! One great example of a flower that doesn't look like a flower is that of the oak tree. The male parts of this "imperfect" flower hang down in stringlike clusters, and they are the ones that release pollen to the wind. Female oak flowers are either single or in small clusters. When they get pollinated, they grow into acorns. Corn also has male flowers (the tassel) whose pollen is spread by the wind. With millions and millions of pollen grains blowing around, it's almost guaranteed that some will land on a female organ (the corn silks) and germinate. Plants that rely on the wind to spread their pollen usually do not produce pretty or showy flowers. That's because they don't need to attract animals to spread their pollen. Pretty flowers, known among scientists as showy flowers, rely on birds, bees or other animals to carry pollen from male to female. Nature has given them attractive "clothes" and sweet "perfumes" to help them attract pollinators. When hummingbirds, moths and honeybees come to sip nectar from these plants, pollen sticks to their feathers or hair. When they visit another flower, they are also delivering pollen to its female parts. Showy flowers can be very specific about which animals will help them reproduce. Some, like trumpet vines, have long, tubular flowers that are best pollinated by hummingbirds or by species of bees and moths that have long tongues. "Flowers that open at night, such as Missouri evening primrose, are typically pollinated by moths," Smith said. "Red flowers are usually pollinated by birds, while white and pale yellow flowers can be seen well by insects at night." Some plants, like the black-eyed Susan and the evening primrose, have markings leading to the nectar that work like landing lights on an airport runway. They're called nectar guides. Bees can see them, but they are invisible to us except under ultraviolet light. There's no end to the number and variety of flowers that decorate Missouri. Each of these flowers has a very important place in nature, and they're all extremely important to life not only in our state, but all over the world.

Blackberries Apple Blackberry Flower Prairie Rose Oak Flowers Corn Tassel Click to Enlarge Sideoats grama grass flowers can have female and/or male parts. The tiny white "feathers" are the stigmas, and the orange anthers contain the pollen. Male oak flowers are contained in drooping catkins. The two tiny, curly stalks are part of the female flower.       Tulip Poplar Evening Primrose Click to Enlarge Nectar guides on the petals of evening primrose are invisible to us, but insects can see them.