Facts At Your Fingertips: The living world – Flowers and seeds
Most plants reproduce using seeds. The seeds are made when the male part (pollen) of one plant combines with the female part (ovum) of another plant.
The plant then scatters its seeds to new places, where they take root and grow into new plants.
Reproducing alone
Some plants, such as the Mexican hat plant, can reproduce without making seeds. They reproduce by growing buds that drop to the ground to grow into new plants.
The new plants are identical to their parent. This process is called asexual reproduction.
Flowers
Most flowers make both pollen and ova (male and female parts) but cannot fertilize themselves (make their own seeds).
Instead, the pollen from one flower is carried to other flowers on the bodies of insects and other animals, or by the wind. The pollen fertilizes the ova, which then develop into seeds.
Pollen gets stuck to a bee’s body when it visits a flower to collect nectar
SCATTERING SEEDS
Plants spread their seeds in different ways. The flowers may grow into fruit, which are eaten by animals.
The seeds then fall to the ground in the animals’ droppings. Some plants make sticky seeds called burrs, which stick to animal fur. Others use the wind, rivers, or oceans to carry their seeds away.
Germinating
When a seed lands in the right place and conditions to grow into a new plant, it germinates.
A shoot grows out of the seed and develops into a stem that grows upward and a root that grows downward.
Food inside the seed gives it the energy to begin germinating, but it soon starts to make its own food in its leaves by photosynthesis.