Flower tutorials - 13 - usage of flowers

People have sought ways to cultivate, buy, wear, or otherwise be around flowers and blooming plants, partly because of their agreeable appearance and smell. Around the world, people use flowers for a wide range of events and functions that, cumulatively, encompass one's lifetime:

* For new births or Christenings
* As a corsage or boutonniere to be worn at social functions or for holidays
* As tokens of love or esteem
* For wedding flowers for the bridal party, and decorations for the hall
* As brightening decorations within the home
* As a gift of remembrance for bon voyage parties, welcome home parties, and "thinking of you" gifts
* For funeral flowers and expressions of sympathy for the grieving
* For worshiping goddesses. in Hindu culture it is very common to bring flowers as a gift to temples.

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Flower tutorials - 12 - Symbolic meaning

Many flowers have important symbolic meanings in various cultures. The practice of assigning meanings to flowers is known as floriography. Some of the more common examples include:
* Red roses - love, beauty, and passion.
* Poppies - consolation in time of death.
* Red poppies - In the UK, New Zealand, Australia and Canada are worn to commemorate soldiers who have died in times of war.
* Irises/Lily - burials as a symbol referring to "resurrection/life".
* Daisies - innocence.

In Hindu mythology, flowers have a significant status. Vishnu, one of the three major gods in the Hindu deities, is often depicted standing straight on a lotus flower. Apart from the association with Vishnu, the Hindu tradition also considers the lotus to have spiritual significance. For example, it figures in the Hindu stories of creation.

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Flower tutorials - 11 - Fertilization & dispersal

Some flowers with both stamens and a pistil are capable of self-fertilization, which does increase the chance of producing seeds but limits genetic variation. The extreme case of self-fertilization occurs in flowers that always self-fertilize, such as many dandelions. Conversely, many species of plants have ways of preventing self-fertilization. Unisexual male and female flowers on the same plant may not appear or mature at the same time, or pollen from the same plant may be incapable of fertilizing its ovules. The latter flower types, which have chemical barriers to their own pollen, are referred to as self-sterile or self-incompatible (see also: Plant sexuality).

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Flower tutorials - 10 - Flowers & pollinators

Many flowers have close relationships with one or a few specific pollinating organisms. Many flowers, for example, attract only one specific species of insect, and therefore rely on that insect for successful reproduction. This close relationship is often given as an example of coevolution, as the flower and pollinator are thought to have developed together over a long period of time to match each other's needs.

This close relationship compounds the negative effects of extinction. The extinction of either member in such a relationship would mean almost certain extinction of the other member as well. Some endangered plant species are so because of shrinking pollinator populations.

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Flower tutorials - 09 - Pollination mechanism

The pollination methods employed by a plant depends on what method of pollination is utilized. Most flowers can be divided between two broad groups of pollination methods:

Entomophilous: flowers attract and use insects, bats, birds or other animals to transfer pollen from one flower to the next.

Anemophilous: flowers use the wind to move pollen from one flower to the next, examples include the grasses, Birch trees, Ragweed and Maples.

Some flowers are self pollinated and use flowers that never open or are self pollinated before the flowers open, these flowers are called cleistogamous.

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Flower tutorials - 08 - Attraction methods

As plants can not move from one location to another, many flowers have evolved to attract animals to transfer pollen between individual plants. Flowers that are insect-pollinated are called entomophilous; literally "insect-loving" in Latin. Flowers commonly have glands called nectaries on various parts that attract animals looking for nutritious nectar. Birds and bees have color vision, enabling them to seek out "colorful" flowers. Some flowers have patterns, called nectar guides, that show pollinators where to look for nectar; they may be visible only under ultraviolet light, which is visible to bees and some other insects. Flowers also attract pollinators by scent and some of those scents are pleasant to our sense of smell. Not all flower scents are appealing to humans, a number of flowers are pollinated by insects that are attracted to rotten flesh and have flowers that smell like dead animals, often called Carrion flowers including Rafflesia, the titan arum, and the North American pawpaw (Asimina triloba). Flowers pollinated by night visitors, including bats and moths, are likely to concentrate on scent to attract pollinators and most such flowers are white.

Still other flowers use mimicry to attract pollinators. Some species of orchids, for example, produce flowers resembling female bees in color, shape, and scent. Male bees move from one such flower to another in search of a mate.

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Flower tutorials - 07 - organ development

Molecular control of a floral organ identity determination is fairly well understood. If we consider a simple model, three gene activities interact in a coordinated manner to determine the developmental identities of the organ primordia within the floral meristem. These gene functions are called A, B and C-gene functions. In the first floral whorl only A-genes are expressed, leading to the formation of sepals. In the second whorl both A- and B-genes are expressed, leading to the formation of petals. In the third whorl, B and C genes interact to form stamens and in the center of the flower C-genes alone give rise to carpels. The model is based upon studies of homeotic mutants in Arabidopsis thaliana and snapdragon, Antirrhinum majus. For example, when there is a loss of B-gene function, mutant flowers are produced with sepals in the first whorl as usual, but also in the second whorl instead of the normal petal formation. In the third whorl the lack of B function but presence of C-function mimics the fourth whorl, leading to the formation of carpels also in the third whorl.

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