Springtime is the season for warmer weather, sunshine, spring showers, and growing plants. You might also find yourself sneezing a lot or having itchy eyes. Plants produce dust-like pollen and spores that can cause uncomfortable allergies for humans.
Some plants can reproduce asexually (asexual plant reproduction requires only one parent cell that splits into two). However, most plants need pollen or spores to make new plants. This second process is called sexual plant reproduction. The creation of new plants happens year after year and plays an essential role in life on Earth.
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Plant reproduction requires the male and female parts of the plant. Pollen is the male cell - it's the yellow dust made on the stamen, or male reproductive part, of the flower. The female part is called the pistil, which contains the ovaries that produce eggs, and it's located in the center of the flower. The pistil also contains the stigma, a sticky bulb that the pollen attaches itself to.
The process of reproduction can be broken into two steps:
Once the seeds have been made, they're often carried away by the wind or rain and get pushed down into the ground until the next spring arrives.
Non-flowering plants (plants that don't make flowers) can be divided into two groups: those that reproduce with spores and those that use seeds. It's important to keep in mind that many species of non-flowering plants can be both sexual and asexual reproducers - some might create their own seeds and spores, while others might require male and female cells to do so.
Mosses and ferns are the most common plants that reproduce using spores. Spores are small, dust-like, and carried by wind and water to new locations where they can grow. These types of plants do well in shady and moist areas. Ferns, for instance, produce spores underneath their leaves. The spores look like brown spots, and when the leaves dry out, the spores get released into the air.
Conifers are trees, such as pine and fir, that reproduce using their seed-containing cones. Did you know some pine cones are male and some cones are female? The male cones release pollen. If the pollen lands on a female cone, the female cone will produce seeds.
Plant reproduction is the creation of new plants by one or more parent plants. In flowering plants, pollination occurs to pass the pollen on to another flower, where fertilization occurs in the pistil. In non-flowering plants, some produce spores while others produce seeds, and some do so with sexual reproduction while others use asexual reproduction.
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In the kitchen, you may consider fruits to be any sweet-tasting part of a plant. In botany, fruits are considered to be the mature product of sexual fertilization of a seed-bearing plant. In flowering plants, the ovary begins to ripen and the ovary wall, called the pericarp, develops into a hard coating (like peanuts) or a fleshy coating (like apples).
You might think that all fruit-producing plants would grow as many seeds as possible to maximize the number of new plants that could grow. However, different plants have different strategies for seed production. Some fruits produce large numbers of seeds to ensure at least a few will grow, others produce one very large, well-protected seed.
Sample Data Table:
| Type of Fruit | Number of Fruits Counted | Total Number of Seeds Counted | Fruit Productivity (Number of Seeds/Fruit) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Avocado | 3 | 3 | 1 |
| Apple | 3 | 18 | 6 |
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