What would nature be like if trees didn’t have flowers? The forests and glens would all be decked in varying shades of green – that wouldn’t be so bad, provided we hadn’t been exposed to the multi colored, multi-scented extravaganza of flowers! However, knowing flowers as they are, it is very difficult to imagine a world without them! I mean, isn’t it so much better for the harrowed lover to have such a wide choice of bouquets to choose from for appeasing the displeasure of one’s lady love or making up after a lovers’ tiff? Besides being the most useful instrument in Cupid’s armory, flowers are also used to convey a lot of other sentiments such as sympathy, condolence, for expressing joy at someone’s good fortune, for symbolizing mourning, for conveying peace and harmony, etc.

Well, well, mushy melodrama apart, flowers have a very important role to play in nature’s plan – carry out the plant reproduction cycle. As plant life forms evolved on Earth, reproduction from seeds became the major norm. These seed bearing plants were further divided into two categories – gymnosperms and angiosperms (the former being non flowering plants and the latter being flower-bearing plants). That being said, let’s take a quick look at some interesting and useful angiosperm facts.

Random Facts about Angiosperms

Let’s begin this tour of angiosperm interesting facts with when it all started. Angiosperms came into being some 240 – 200 million years ago when they diverged from gymnosperms, their evolutionary predecessors!
In fact, the reproductive organs of angiosperms are a modified, more advanced version of gymnosperms. In gymnosperms, the seeds are not encased within a floral structure (gymnosperm = gymnospermos which is Greek for “naked seeds”) while in angiosperms, the unfertilized seeds are contained within the ovaries of the flowers. Post fertilization, these ovaries become engorged and fleshy, becoming the fruits that contain the germ-containing fertilized seeds that are ready for germination on striking suitable soil environment after getting appropriately dispersed. Read the rest of this entry »