Dissecting A Flower

The unsuspecting specimen lays on the table.

Dancer smiles as she is about to chop it apart.

Spark studying the stem.  Check out that mad scientist 'do he has going on there.

This is the whole flower.  You can see the petals, the stigma, anther and filament.  The stigma is at the top of the pistil--the female portion of a flower.  The filament and the anther make up the stamen--the male part of the flower.  This flower is brightly colored to attract insects to the nectar.  Other flowers attract different pollinators.  Some flower, that need flies for pollination, are a shiny green or brown and smell like rotting flesh or fish.

This is a cross section of the bottom of the pistil, the female part of the flower.  The lower section is the ovary, the circular objects are the ovules.  The ovules are where the seeds actually develop (the ovules become the seeds).

This is a hollyhock bud, it was later dissected to see the pistil and stamen as they develop.  It is easy to see the sepals in this picture.  They are the green "leaflets" at the bottom of the flower.  The serve to protect the bud and to help support the flower.

This is a picture of geranium seeds.  I especially like geranium seeds because they make spirals as they break free of the plant.  They peel off of the green pieces you can see.  The green parts were the ovary at the base of the pistil, and the flower. The seeds float through the air like dandelion seeds.

This is a flower from a hosta.  We looked at lot of different flowers because there is a huge variety in the make up of flowers.  Some have one or only a few stamen, others have thousands.  None of the flowers were very fragrant.  Maybe that is because we had frost weeks ago and most of the insects are dead.  They were are very colorful and fun to work with.