Probably the prettiest genitalia in the world. Flowers are often beautiful and colorful collections of leaves organized in a circular way. Sometimes in a more rectangular shape and in rare occasions they don’t even look like flowers (think about the flowers of hazelnut trees, which look more like hanging ropes, or green phalluses. To be fair, technically those are a collection of flowers and not one flower). Flowers are what a mushroom is for a fungus, or what penises and vaginas are for humans. Of course there are a couple of minor differences. Are you intrigued? Read more below.

Parts (flower anatomy)

Flowers consist of a few very important parts. Leaves, among others. Three different kinds of leaves. Pretty leaves, green leaves and in-between leaves. In more scientific terms, the petals, sepals and tepals. Petals are the beautiful colored ones, often with a more distinguishable shape as well. They are the ones that give the flower their striking exterior and are the reason people love to stare at them. Sepals are the green leaves, those found under and around the petals. They function as a protection while the petals develop. Tepals are leaves that are both petals and sepals while also being neither. Tepals are only present when the petals and sepals look the exact same.

The most important parts of the flower are of course the procreation parts. The male structures are called stamens. They are made out of an anther (the upper part carrying the pollen) and a filament or (the long stemlike structure). In some flowers the stamens don’t have stalks and sit on the leaves or carpel of the flower. The female part of the flower is called a carpel. A carpel is made up of a stigma, a style and an ovary. The stigma is the sticky bit that catches pollen, the ovary is the part where the eggs are and fertilization happens and the style is the connective tube between them.

Beauty

Flowers are well known for their beauty. People love to gift flowers for birthdays, weddings, Valentine’s day. They are used as decorations during funerals. Imagine doing that with any other creature’s genitals. Cutting them, decorating, arranging them and then giving it to someone you like or love. It would be so weird. However, we all accept flowers as a gift. Just because they are pretty. Possibly the worst part is that we can’t even enjoy the true beauty of flowers. We only see the visible spectrum of the reflected light. Let’s be honest, the visible spectrum is quite cool, but wouldn’t you like to be able to see UV-light as well? Who does get to enjoy the true beauty of flowers? Simple, insects. The pollinators. Turns out, flowers in the UV-spectrum look a lot like giant arrows showing insects the way to the sweet nectar halls.

Flowers are mostly sent as a gift in Western cultures. The top five of flower sending countries includes, UK, USA, Canada, Germany and Australia. We even have a tradition of only sending an odd number of stems, which brings about happiness. It’s only on Valentine’s day that this tradition does not hold up, because then we gift a dozen roses to our loved ones. While in the main flower export countries, only one is European, it does account for 53% of the global export. To no surprise of anyone, that country is the Netherlands. The other four are Colombia, Ecuador, Kenya and Ethiopia, which account for about 35% together. We can only conclude one thing, Europeans (Western cultures in general) love flowers.

Smell

Why do we love the smell of flowers? Because they smell nice of course. Why do flowers smell? Now that is a whole different question all together. It would be a bit arrogant of us to think we are the reason these flowers have such an attractive aroma. Also, not all of them smell attractive to us. So why do flowers scent the air around them?

Flowers have to communicate with the world around them. Unlike animals and humans, they can’t make noises. They aren’t able to shout at a passing bee that it should really come and have a drink of its divine flower juices. Flowers are restricted to communication through chemicals they release in the air. By happenstance, these chemicals turn out to not only attract insects or birds, but also humanoids. There’s nothing quite like smelling plant genitalia to really admire the beauty of nature. As I said, not all plants have a lovely sweet or herbal scent, some of them smell like a dying cat. Or a dying dog. Or a dying donkey, or bird. Whatever dead animal. Because of the smell of a dying animal, all different types of scavenger flies and other insects are attracted to the plant.

Why do these plants want to attract tiny animals onto their genitalia? To rub their pollen (plant sperm) all over the animal and at the same time, to get the animal to rub all of its previously collected pollen all over the stigma. Pollinators are animals that are sexually assaulted by plants for the sole purpose of procreation. Just spread your pollen in the wind like a decent plant. To be fair, the plants pay with nectar, at least most do. Nectar is sweet flower juice and is basically just highly concentrated sugar water. That is why humming birds have such a consistently high heartbeat (sugar rush). To be clear, that isn’t the case, they are just tiny and have a very fast metabolism.

Reproduction

The very cool thing about flowers is that there are three different sexes: male, female and both. Because flowers are only the genitalia of the plant, there are male, female and dioecious plants. Plants are able to have only male or female flowers, but also both male and female flowers (monoecious). There are even plants that have male, female and bisexual flowers. Plants have no interest in a binary society, they just want to procreate as efficient as possible. Even if it means cloning themselves (parthenogenesis, future biology of the week topic).

When a pollen hits the stigma, chemicals in the stigma activate the creation of the pollen tube. That pollen tube is the representation of the long and lonely road the pollen had to traverse through the style into the ovary before arriving at its final destination. The pollen then fertilizes the or an egg (depending on the plant species). The fertilized egg grows into a seed or pit. The things we don’t like to be in our fruit. The stuff we throw away outside is the zygote (baby) of the plant. The horrific things we do to plants. Have they no rights? No. Back to the good part. The ovary grows into a fruit (nut for example), sometimes the bottom of the flower is also part of the fruit (apple or pear). We eat the surrounding flesh so the seeds are spread around the forest, at least that is how nature intended it. Now we just throw the seeds into the garbage or green disposal.

Thank you for reading my post once again. I hope this helps you appreciate and understand flowers more when they are all blooming in the coming weeks.