
Flowers are truly amazing with all the different varieties, colours and fragrances they have together with being the reproductive organ or most seed bearing plants.
The largest flower known to us is the Rafflesia, and it weighs in around 15lbs (7 kilograms) and can only be found in Indonesia. It is known as the ‘corpse flower’ as it smells of a rotten body. It has no leaves, stem or root and the only thing seen outside the vine is the five petaled red flower.
And did you know that the Rose is a symbol of the British Royal family. The War of the Roses was so named because of the battle between the Lancastrians whose symbol was the red rose and the Yorkists whose symbol was the white rose.
Many flowers provide bees with the wax they need to make their hives while the orchid flower supplies the male bee with a special oil that he uses to attract a female.
The fragrance of a flower is produced by the essence of oil in it. Lady Slipper orchids have a special fragrant pouch which draws flies into it, they get trapped inside and then pollination takes place.
Flowers have male and female parts, male parts are called the stamens and the female part is named carpel. At the top of the stamen is the anther which generates a grain like substance called pollen.
The wind carries the pollen from the anther to the stigma which is part of the carpel, it is carried down to the ovary, then the pollen fertilizes the ovule and creates a seed, this is called pollination.
Sometimes the pollen is carried from flower to flower by insects like butterflies and birds etc as it attaches itself to the body of the insect, when they move on to the next flower the substance rubs off on the stigma and then the process starts again.
Fascinating don’t you think?