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Hermaphroditism is a condition that is by no means exclusive to the Animal kingdom. In fact, in the plant world the appearance of hermaphrodite flowers it is very common: between 75% and 90% of plants develop it.
If you want to learn more about plants that are hermaphrodites, join us in this curious article by Ecologist Verde in which we talk about what are hermaphrodite plants, their characteristics and examples of these vegetables and some schemes.
What are hermaphroditic plants
The sexual organs of plants are found in flowers and you can differentiate female and male parts:
- The female part It is called gynoecium and consists of a stigma, which is where the pollen is received, a style, which supports the stigma, and an ovary, which is what will ripen and give rise to the fruit if the flower is pollinated.
- The male part it is called androecium, and consists of anther and filament. The anther is the organ that contains pollen and the filament is a thin stem that supports it.
Taking this into account, we can say that a plant is hermaphrodite when it has flowers in which the parts of both sexes are found, also called perfect flowers. The hermaphroditic plant parts they are the same, simply the flowers contain both sexual organs. Not all the flowers of a hermaphroditic plant will necessarily contain both gynoecium and androecium; it is common for perfect flowers and single-sex flowers to coexist.
Monoecious and dioecious plants
Plants whose flowers are not perfect they can be monoecious or dioecious.
- In monoecious plants, a single individual contains flowers of both sexes, but differentiated, so they are hermaphrodites. The usual thing is that the female flowers are in the lower part of the plant, while the male ones are in the upper end, in such a way that they facilitate the transport of pollen by the wind.
- Dioecious plants, on the other hand, are totally unisexual: each individual produces only female or male flowers, so they are always biparental or opposite to hermaphrodites. This is a strategy to avoid autogamy, thus ensuring the plant does not reproduce with itself and thus achieve a greater genetic variety.
Learn more about flowers with this other Green Ecologist article on The parts of a flower and their functions.
Hermaphroditic plant characteristics
These are the main characteristics of hermaphroditic plants:
- As we have mentioned before, the main characteristic of hermaphrodite plants is that they produce flowers with sexual organs of both sexes.
- This allows them to reproduce much more easily, being an especially important mechanism in unfavorable environments for insects or pollinating animals. Some hermaphroditic plants, in fact, routinely resort to autogamy, that is, they pollinate themselves.
- Autogamy of hermaphroditic plants can be forced, or simply coexist with the usual methods of reproduction, in a way that improves the chances of survival of the species without giving up genetic variability.
- Some hermaphroditic plants resort to cleistogamy. This is a type of autogamy in which the flower does not even open its petals and sepals, but remains closed and fertilizes itself. It is a very safe method to ensure the propagation of your genetic material, although it renounces diversity.
- Other species of hermaphroditic plants, precisely to avoid this autogamy, which may not favor some plants, resort to different types of self-incompatibility to ensure their genetic diversity. They can make the gametes of different sexes of the flower mature at different times so that they cannot self-fertilize, or that the plant has filters or other systems that separate its own pollen.
Examples of hermaphroditic plants
There are a large number of hermaphrodite plants that are commonly used in agriculture. These are some hermaphroditic plant names common: tomatoes, peppers and corn. Their main advantage lies in how easy it is to reproduce them, since they are not dependent on pollinating insects. In addition, some hermaphroditic flowers give rise to different fruits than those produced by single-sex flowers, sometimes more commercially appreciated. We talk in more detail about these examples of hermaphroditic plants:
Tomato
In the case of tomatoes, with a scientific name Solanum lycopersicum, we are talking about one of the best known plants in the world. Its flowers are hermaphroditic and self-fertilize. It does not produce nectar, as it does not need to attract pollinators, and its stamens are large and form a closed tube that surrounds the pistil, ensuring fertilization.
Pollen is shed from the stamens at any vibration or movement, whether caused by insects or the wind, or even by human action.
Corn
Corn o Zea mays, another of the most widespread crops in the world, is also a hermaphroditic plant and is a monoecious plant. It is considered hermaphrodite because it can fertilize itself, but produces flowers of both sexes separately.
In corn, the male flower, popularly called the panicle, grows at the upper end of the plant as spikes, while the female ones grow lower, at a medium or low height on the stem. This causes that when the wind blows or the plant moves, the male flower releases pollen and can fertilize its own female flowers, although these female flowers can also receive pollen from the male flowers of another nearby corn plant, giving rise to this case to a hybrid.
If you want to learn more about how plants reproduce, here is some information about plant reproduction.
If you want to read more articles similar to Hermaphrodite plants: what are they, characteristics and examples, we recommend that you enter our Biology category.
