Plant sexuality covers the wide variety of
sexual reproduction systems found across the
plant kingdom. This article describes
morphological aspects of sexual reproduction of plants.
Among all living organisms, Flowers which are the reproductive structures of angiosperms, are the most varied physically and show the greatest diversity in methods of reproduction of all biological systems.[1] Carolus Linnaeus (1735 and 1753) proposed a system of classification of flowering plants based on plant structures, since plants employ many different morphological adaptations involving sexual reproduction, flowers played an important role in that classification system. Later on Christian Konrad Sprengel (1793) studied plant sexuality and called it the "revealed secret of nature" and for the first time it was understood that the pollination process involved both biotic and abiotic interactions (Charles Darwin's theories of natural selection utilized this work to promote his idea of evolution). Plants that are not flowering plants (green alga, mosses, liverworts, hornworts, ferns, and gymnosperms) also have complex interplays between morphological adaptation and environmental factors in their sexual reproduction. The breeding system, or how the sperm from one plant fertilizes the ovals of another, is the single most important determinant of the mating structure of nonclonal plant populations. The mating structure or morphology of the flower parts and their arrangement on the plant in turn controls the amount and distribution of genetic variation, a central element in the evolutionary process.[2]
Unlike animals, plants are immobile and cannot seek out sexual partners for reproduction. The first plants used abiotic means to transport sperm for reproduction, utilizing water and wind. The first plants were aquatic and released sperm freely into the water to be carried by the currents. As plants moved onto land they used a thin film of water or water droplets like liverworts and ferns, in which mobile sperm swam from the male reproduction organs to the female organs. As plants became more complex and developed vascular systems enabling them to grow taller, they used alternation of generations like in ferns or the wind to move spores. In the Paleozoic era progymnosperms reproduced by using spores dispersed on the wind, 350 million years ago the seed plants evolved, including seed ferns, conifers and cordaites all were gymnosperms. Pollen grains, the male gametophyte, developed for protection of the sperm during the process of transfer from male to female parts. It is believed that insects feed on the pollen and plants evolved to use insects to actively carry pollen from one plant to the next. Seed producing plants, which include the angiosperms and the gymnosperms, have hetromorphic alternation of generations with large sporophytes containing much reduced gametophytes. Angiosperms have distinctive reproductive organs called flowers with carpels and the gametophyte is greatly reduced down to a female embryo sac with as few as eight cells and the male gametophyte develop from the pollen grains. The sperm of seed plants are non motile except for two older groups of plants the Cycadophyta and the Ginkgophyta which have flagellated sperm.
The flowers of angiosperms are determinate shoots that have sporophylls. The parts of flowers are named by scientists and show great variation in shape, these flower parts include sepals, petals, stamens and carpels. As a group the sepals form the calyx and as a group the petals form the corolla, together the corolla and the calyx is called the perianth. The stamens collectively are called the androecuim and the carpels collectively are called the gynoecium.
