ANGIOSPERMS

Angiosperms - flowering plants, are both vascular and seed bearing. Their seeds are surrounded by a fleshy fruit. They also have flowers to attract pollinators. The fleshy part of the fruit is payment for the animals that "carry" their seeds to different places. So animals eat the fruits (with the seed inside) and when they poop, they deposit the seed (with fertilizer!) Plants are so smart! Angiosperms are the most diverse group of plants with over 250,000 species. They also live in varying environments and they are all adapted to survive in those environments.

Enjoy the diversity of flowering plants and if you have not thanked a green plant today. . . you need to because without them, we would die!Snowdrops grow out of the snow, they need really cold winters to sprout in the spring literally out of the snow. I tried growing them in my garden, but sadly our winters are not cold enough for them and they never sprout.


Lilly-of-the-valley! One of my favorite flowers, it blooms in the spring around May. The flower is a stem with little bells hanging off. They are very beautiful in a wedding bouquet!



Chrysanthemum. . . I think, it's hard to tell when it's so close up!



I took this picture of these bush flowers all over PLU campus. There are ones with pink flowers and ones with white flowers.

Tulips!

Christmas cactus. . . they bloom around Christmas time. We have a lot of these at home (they're house plants) and they're just amazing when they bloom!

WOW! Look at the colors!

Perfect symmetry in nature!

Lavender

Lilac . . . one of my favorite flowers! I love their smell! I have lilac perfume and I always use it when lilacs are in bloom!



The next five pictures are all of orchids - my all time FAVORITE flowers! Orchids are really amazing . . . even though they're parasites! Some species of orchids are very specific about their pollinators . . . some are species specific where they need a certain species of a certain pollinator. This is very dangerous because if the number of the pollinators decrease, then the orchids would decrease. This could potentially lead to extinction if the number of pollinators fell drastically. Very sad because orchids are sooooo beautiful!!!!!!!!!!

Pansy

Gerbera daisy

Rose

Crocus - another spring flower! First to bloom after snowdrops!

Sunflower - can anyone guess why it's called the "SUNflower"? Very obvious! This picture is really cool!

Tulips!

Tropical flowers . . . don't really know the name. . .

Water lily!

Narcissus! Different from the daffodil because it has multiple flower heads on the same stem.





Close up of a flower's reproductive parts. The Stamen is the male part and the carpel is the female. I can't tell which are which on this picture. . .

Wildflowers!

Poison Ivy

All the different colors are flower colors. It looks like grass, but they are modified flowers that are very short to keep out of the wind.

Poppy!

Hibiscus

Amazing colors! I had this as my desktop background until recently when I changed it to a picture of the yellowing moss. It's like the perfect nature scenery!

Birch - trees are flowers too!

Gerbera daisy

Tulip - up close and personal!

This next section consists of very special plants. . . CARNIVOROUS PLANTS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
When I said earlier that plants are adapted to all kinds of environments, I wasn't kidding! There's this island in the tropics somewhere where it is surrounded by cliffs, so the water is always flowing down creating the world's biggest waterfalls, but the water also carries away nutrients from the soil that the plants need. The plants in that place have adapted to trap insects for food! It's pretty cool!

Fly trap - catches flies by closing in on them

Sundew. . . looks soooooo cool! BUT all those beads of liquid are very sticky! Insect gets stuck and the flower wraps it up!

Pitcher plants. . . they have this pitfall which is very smooth. . . insects fall down and at the bottom they have a pool of digestive enzymes which break apart the poor insect and use it for food!


How can someone not LOVE flowers after this! I mean seeing the diversity, the adaptation, the genius! You HAVE TO APPRECIATE FLOWERS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
What I have here is a very, very small part of plants and their diversity. There is much, much more out there to explore and learn!