Plant reproduction

[RandallJ.]

I was reading that plants either reproduce by pollinization or through seeds or spores. Flowering plants reproducing by pollinating. Then I was reading somewhere else that the flowers of a plant produce the seeds. So those statements are in conflict with one another.

I'm new to gardening and plants so I'm still incredibly ignorant about most everything plant related. Yet the more I read and learn the more I realize that there really isnt anyone that knows anything deeply substantial, Or even accurate and true, about plants other than a botanist. All the info is very generalized and often times wrong. Or atleast in conflict with other info like the example I provided.

There are over 300,000 flowering plant species (at least according to one part of the internet. Some say 340,000 some say more some say less etc. But at least 300,00 if you do a poormans average on all the "answers" google provides.) That is a lot of plants. All different with different characteristics etc. I dont even know if thats including hybrids and cultivars. Point is there is just too many with too many varying traits to be able to understand the absolute facts without extensive study in botany. Which makes this gardening endeavor a lot more complicated but a lot more interesting as well.


Oh and before I leave i just remembered another example. Lotus and waterlillies. Some places say they are different. That a lotus extends up and out of the water and the water Lilly sits on top. Other places they use the two names or species interchangeably. As if they were the same.

 

[Chuck]

Your first paragraph is totally misinformed. To have seeds from a plant's flower first the flower must be pollinated in order to grow the seeds. In your second paragraph, the first sentence is true but the rest of the paragraph is false. Your third paragraph is basically true. I am 75 years old and have been gardening my entire life and I still learn new things every day. And since I have no interest in water lillies or lotus I have not bothered to actually find out.

 

[Oliver Buckle]

Very primitive plants are fibres of single cells joined end to end, the cells can split (Asexual reproduction) or line up next to each other and merge (Sexual reproduction) producing more plants.
The older types recognisable as plants, like ferns and liverworts, have two generations. The first generation has a single set of chromosomes, haploid, it develops two sexual areas which come together producing the second generation which has two sets of chromosomes, diploid. This second generation grows tall, the fern you would recognise, and that produces spores, which only have one set of chromosomes, and will grow into the first generation, usually a flat green nothing special.
Then come the angiosperms, what happens in the ferns is still there, but as single cells in the flower, not whole plants, and produces pollen and ovaries which combine to give seeds. The seeds have a pair of chromosomes, but the process also produces another cell which is triploid, it has three sets of chromosomes, this grows into the part which is not the seed.
So imagine an apple. The bit with single sets of chromosomes all happens as single cells, and goes on a stage further. The resulting cells with two sets of chromosomes, one from each parent, result in the seeds in the middle, the odd cell with three sets of chromosomes (Triploid) makes the part of the apple you eat.
Give it a few more hundred million years and expect all that bit that happens as haploid and diploid, tree and blossom, to have receded to single cells, and the triploid apples to be walking round looking for each other

 

[RandallJ.]

Very primitive plants are fibres of single cells joined end to end, the cells can split (Asexual reproduction) or line up next to each other and merge (Sexual reproduction) producing more plants.
The older types recognisable as plants, like ferns and liverworts, have two generations. The first generation has a single set of chromosomes, haploid, it develops two sexual areas which come together producing the second generation which has two sets of chromosomes, diploid. This second generation grows tall, the fern you would recognise, and that produces spores, which only have one set of chromosomes, and will grow into the first generation, usually a flat green nothing special.
Then come the angiosperms, what happens in the ferns is still there, but as single cells in the flower, not whole plants, and produces pollen and ovaries which combine to give seeds. The seeds have a pair of chromosomes, but the process also produces another cell which is triploid, it has three sets of chromosomes, this grows into the part which is not the seed.
So imagine an apple. The bit with single sets of chromosomes all happens as single cells, and goes on a stage further. The resulting cells with two sets of chromosomes, one from each parent, result in the seeds in the middle, the odd cell with three sets of chromosomes (Triploid) makes the part of the apple you eat.
Give it a few more hundred million years and expect all that bit that happens as haploid and diploid, tree and blossom, to have receded to single cells, and the triploid apples to be walking round looking for each other

Are you trying to make a case for evolution?

 

[Oliver Buckle]

It is the sort of thing I enjoy. Probably comes from having a father and big brother who were biology teachers.