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II.
Plant Reproduction—
Everything You Always Wanted to Know... |
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We talked a little about plant reproduction in various weeks
of Part I of this botany course—for example during our discussions of flower
structure, classification, and adaptations. This week we’ll cover the topic a little
more systematically, bringing together many of the concepts we only touched upon earlier.
We’ll be focusing on flowering plants, because they are both the most complex and the
most common in our gardens. However many of the principles we discuss also apply to
conifers, ferns, and even mosses.Obviously plants,
like humans, have finite life spans and must reproduce if their species are to persist.
Reproduction is a driving force for many organisms’ behavior, and plants are no
exception. Many plants expend a huge amount of energy to reproduce. Consider the energy it
takes for a plant to produce large, showy, or complex flowers such as tiger lilies,
dahlias, or irises—especially relative to the energy it expends to produce the
smaller, simpler leaves. (And leaves, unlike flowers, photosynthesize, producing energy to
boot!)
Before we move on to the details of plant reproduction,
let’s discuss a more general concept, plant life cycles.
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