Flowers come in many different shapes and sizes, and have many different variations in colour, the number of parts and the arrangement of these parts.
The following will help to explain what a dicotyledonous flower is made up of.
Please see the diagrams below.
A dicotyledonous is an Angiosperm or flowering plant, which has cotyledons, seed leaves, in pairs. The pollen has three furrows and the flower parts are usually in fours and fives, or multiples of two and five.
Generally a flower consists of four whorls.
Table of Contents
The calyx is a collective term for sepals, the outer most whorl of a flower and is usually yellow or green in colour. The sepals may be free from each other or fused to form a cup. The calyx encloses and protects the inner whorls during the bud stage. When the petals on a flower drop the calyx remains and, as they contain chlorophyll they can also synthesise food.
The corolla is on the inside of the calyx and is made up of, usually, brightly coloured petals, which are much larger than the sepals.
The petals can be separate from one another, termed polypetalous, or fused together, termed gamopetalous. If they are fused together they form what is called a corolla tube.
The calyx and the corolla together are called the perianth.The brightly coloured corolla attracts birds and insects to aid with pollination, and the corolla surrounds the stamen and pistil.
The stamens are the third whorl on the inside of the corolla. Each stamen is made up of a thin and flexible filament (stalk), and an anther (the terminal portion), which is normally two lobed The stamen is known as the androecium and is used to describe the male reproduction organs.
Androecium means ” House of Man”.
The pistil is the fourth and innermost whorl of the flower and is one of the female reproductive organs making up the gynoecium, consisting of the ovary, which is a hollow cavity, containing the ovules. Each ovule contains an egg cell. From the ovary comes the style, which connects the ovary to the stigma. The stigma is at the tip of the style and becomes sticky when it is ready to receive or trap pollen grains.
Gynoecium means “House of Woman”.
The receptacle is the part from which all flower parts grow, this is located at the top of the pedicel or the stalk.
The Oxford dictionary of plant sciences, Micheal Allaby
The illustrated dictionary of gardening, Micheal Pollock and Mark Griffiths
The principles of horticulture, fourth edition, C.R Adams and M.P Early
Biology of plants, fifth edition, Peter H Raven, Ray F Evert, Susan E Eichhorn
Science and the garden, Edited by David S Ingram, Daphne Vince-Prue and Peter J Gregory
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