Its common name comes from the leaves, which resemble those of a maple tree though it isn't actually in the maple family. This cute little plant has triangular, clover-like purple leaves that fold down at night or in dim light conditions. An almost constant show of pale pink or white blooms goes on above the foliage. You can also find oxalis varieties that have plain green foliage with and without silvery accents.
Why We Love It: The shamrock-shape leaves are beautiful and charming. Plus, it makes a fun gift on St. Patrick's Day. Perhaps peace lily 's white flowers aren't the flashiest, but they have a stately elegance to them as they appear above the glossy foliage on long, slender stems.
This easy-care plant can bloom throughout the year, but produces the most flowers during summer. Why We Love It: Its large, deep green leaves add an instant tropical touch to any room, and it's one of the easiest flowering houseplants you can grow. Note: This plant is poisonous if eaten or chewed on. When grown in bright light, anthuriums will reward you with its long-lasting flowers in festive shades of pink, red, lavender, or white.
They also make a long-lasting cut flower if you can bear to snip them off the plant. Even when not in bloom, its glossy green leaves are attractive all on their own.
There are many types of jasmine. Flowered jasmine J. They'll bear fragrant pink to white blooms on vining plants. Why We Love It: The beautiful pink or white blooms are some of the most fragrant you'll find on any houseplant. You may also see clivia called kaffir lily. As a houseplant, it usually blooms in winter with clusters of up to 20 reddish-orange or yellow tubular flowers.
Clivia blooms only when it has been exposed to cool, dry conditions, so give it lower temperatures in winter and keep it on the dry side. Why We Love It: It's extra easy to grow and the flowers brighten up January days when there's not a lot else in bloom.
This hybrid between mandarin orange and kumquat bears fragrant white blossoms in late winter or spring. The wonderfully fragrant flowers develop into showy 1-inch-diameter orange fruits on a shrubby plant with glossy green foliage. Fruits can remain on the plant for many weeks.
Why We Love It: You can harvest the fruits after they ripen and use them like lemons or kumquats or make them into marmalade. Many of the plants sold as Christmas cactus are actually closely related species sometimes called Thanksgiving cactus , which usually blooms a few weeks earlier. Both these plants flower in response to cool temperatures and short days in fall and winter. Wondering where this plant received its moniker? The fireworks part of its name comes from two sources: In late spring and summer, it sends up deep red flower bracts that develop lavender flowers, creating an explosion of color.
And as the flowers fade, it shoots out small black seeds that you can grow into even more plants. Like many houseplants, it's also a great choice for growing outdoors in a shade garden. Why We Love It: It's always attractive. You never have to worry about what it looks like when it's done blooming because the green leaves have eye-catching silver markings. This poinsettia relative tolerates neglect, as long as you give it bright to intense light and keep it on the dry side. It has thick, spiny, gray-brown stems that are sparsely branched.
Why We Love It: It's an easy-care, low-water plant whose colorful bract-like flowers last for weeks. Note: This plant is poisonous and the milky sap can cause illness or skin irritation if eaten or chewed by children or pets. It's also very thorny. Usually blooming in late winter or early spring, gloxinia bears 3-inch-wide, bell-shape blooms in rich colors, often marked with contrasting bands or speckles of white.
After blooms fade, allow the plant to go dormant by withholding water. When new growth begins again, resume watering. This African violet relative blooms most in summer, but if it has enough light, it'll flower all year long.
Some other species bear their blooms on long stalks that dangle like a fishing line with a goldfish at the end of the line. The arching stems and dangling blooms of guppy plant make it a good choice for hanging baskets.
Why We Love It: How can you not love a plant whose flowers look like goldfish! Uppermost in the benefits package for insects is nectar, a nutritious fluid flowers provide as a type of trading commodity in exchange for pollen dispersal. The ancestors of bees, butterflies, and wasps grew dependent on nectar, and in so doing became agents of pollen transport, inadvertently carrying off grains hitched to tiny hairs on their bodies.
These insects could pick up and deliver pollen with each visit to new flowers, raising the chances of fertilization. Insects weren't the only obliging species to help transport flowering plants to every corner of the Earth.
Dinosaurs, the greatest movers and shakers the world has ever known, bulldozed through ancient forests, unwittingly clearing new ground for angiosperms.
They also sowed seeds across the land by way of their digestive tracts. By the time the first flowering plant appeared, plant-eating dinosaurs had been around for a million centuries, all the while living on a diet of ferns, conifers, and other primordial vegetation. Dinosaurs survived for another 65 million years, and some scientists think this was plenty of time for the big reptiles to adapt to a new diet that included angiosperms.
Johnson has unearthed many fossils between 60 and 70 million years old from sites across the Rocky Mountain region.
From them he deduces that hadrosaurs, or duck-billed dinosaurs, subsisted on large angiosperm leaves that had evolved in a warm climatic shift just before the Cretaceous period ended. Referring to sediments that just predate the dinosaur extinction, he said, "I've only found a few hundred samples of nonflowering plants there, but I've recovered 35, specimens of angiosperms.
There's no doubt the dinosaurs were eating these things. Early angiosperms were low-growing, a fact that suited some dinosaurs better than others. Dinosaurs disappeared suddenly about 65 million years ago, and another group of animals took their place—the mammals, which greatly profited from the diversity of angio-sperm fruits, including grains, nuts, and many vegetables. Flowering plants, in turn, reaped the benefits of seed dispersal by mammals.
Eventually humans evolved, and the two kingdoms made another handshake. Through agriculture angiosperms met our need for sustenance. We in turn have taken certain species like corn and rice and given them unprecedented success, cultivating them in vast fields, pollinating them deliberately, consuming them with gusto. Virtually every nonmeat food we eat starts as a flowering plant, while the meats, milk, and eggs we consume come from livestock fattened on grains—flowering plants.
Even the cotton we wear is an angiosperm. Aesthetically, too, angiosperms sustain and enrich our lives. We've come to value them for their beauty alone, their scents, their companionship in a vase, a pot, on Valentine's Day. Some flowers speak an ancient language where words fall short. For these more dazzling players—the orchids, the roses, the lilies—the world grows smaller, crisscrossed every day by jet-setting flowers in the cargo holds of commercial transport planes.
On my way home from Friis's lab in Sweden, I had stopped in the Netherlands, the world's largest exporter of cut flowers. I asked Lanning to try to explain the meaning of his chosen work. He leaned forward with a ready answer.
It's an emotional product. People are attracted to living things. Smell, sight, beauty are all combined in a flower. It is a necessary luxury. I made my way there and pressed in among them. Suddenly I was staring at "Sunflowers," one of van Gogh's most famous works. In the painting the flowers lean out of a vase, furry and disheveled.
They transported me to my barefoot youth at the edge of my dad's garden on a humid summer evening alive with fireflies and the murmur of cicadas.
The crowd moved on, and I was alone with "Sunflowers. Did van Gogh elevate the flower to an art form, or did the flower harness van Gogh's genius to immortalize itself in oils and brushstrokes?
Flowering plants have conquered more than just the land. They have sent roots deep into our minds and hearts. We know we are passing through their world as through a museum, for they were here long before we arrived and may well remain long after we are gone. All rights reserved.
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Environment As the EU targets emissions cuts, this country has a coal problem. Poinsettia Euphorbia pulcherrima in full bloom at Christmas time in southern California. Left: Bright red modified leaves A surround a central cluster of greenish-yellow flower clusters called cyathia. Right: Each cup-shaped cyathium B contains a cluster of red stamens D which are the male flowers. Inside each cyathium is a hidden female flower not shown consisting of a single, minute ovary.
The rim of the cyathium bears a greenish-yellow nectar gland C. Chamaesyce polycarpa , a prostrate, native spurge that grows throughout dry chaparral hillsides in southern California. Left: Overall view of plant showing numerous cup-shaped cyathia. Right: Close-up view of several cyathia showing reddish-purple, oval glands on rim of cyathia, each subtended by a greenish-white petaloid appendage. Male flowers stamens are included in the cyathia, while a female flower ovary bearing 3 styles protrudes out of each cyathium on a long stalk.
Petty spurge Euphorbia peplus , an erect garden weed in southern California with alternate leaves and milky sap. Originally native to Europe, this prolific seeder has become naturalized throughout North America. The urn-shaped cyathium bears crescent-shaped, 2-horned glands on its rim. There are no petaloid appendages. Wolffia borealis: Dorsal view of budding flowering plant next to the tip of a sewing needle. The floral cavity contains a single pistil with a circular, concave stigma and one stamen.
A South African baobab tree Adansonia digitata , one of the most massive flowering plants. The enormous trunk may exceed feet in circumference and store 25, gallons of water weighing tons.
According to E. Palmer and N. Pitman Trees of South Africa , , a tree with a volume of 7, cubic feet may contain 30, gallons of water. This amount of water alone would weigh an astonishing tons. See Plant Sexuality and Political Correctness.
Armstrong, W. Borror, D. Holt, Rinehart and Winston, New York. Kelly, S. Volume I and II.
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