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The fossil history of flowering plants records the development of flowers and other distinctive structures of the angiosperms, now the dominant group of plants on land.The history is controversial as flowering plants appear in great diversity in the Cretaceous, with scanty and debatable records before that, creating a puzzle for evolutionary biologists that Charles Darwin named an "abominable ...
Mendel worked with seven characteristics of pea plants: plant height, pod shape and color, seed shape and color, and flower position and color. Taking seed color as an example, Mendel showed that when a true-breeding yellow pea and a true-breeding green pea were cross-bred, their offspring always produced yellow seeds.
Sprengel identified that flowers were essentially organs adapted in their structures to attract insects, which events aided in pollinating the plant. He observed that nectar was an attractant and that petals had markings that guided insects to the nectar.
[64] [65] Meanwhile, in Switzerland, from 1554, Conrad Gessner (1516 – 1565) made regular explorations of the Swiss Alps from his native Zurich and discovered many new plants. He proposed that there were groups or genera of plants. He said that each genus was composed of many species and that these were defined by similar flowers and fruits.
Scientists studying fossils found in Spain say they may have found the world's 'first flower.' Kind of. Researchers were studying fossils of a freshwater plant species known as Montsechia vidalii ...
The main function of a flower is reproduction, which, before the evolution of the flower and angiosperms, was the job of microsporophylls and megasporophylls. A flower can be considered a powerful evolutionary innovation, because its presence allowed the plant world to access new means and mechanisms for reproduction. [citation needed]
They had very simple branching patterns, with the branches terminated by flattened sporangia. By the end of the Silurian much more complex vascular plants, the zosterophylls, had diversified [8] and primitive lycopods, such as Baragwanathia (originally discovered in Silurian deposits in Victoria, Australia), [9] had become widespread.
Gardener-botanists were instrumental in the transport around the globe of newly discovered ornamental plants for the estates of the European wealthy, as well as crops like spices, breadfruit, coffee, quinine, rubber and other important economic crops, a duty that required specially designed cabinets and equipment like the Wardian Case. Their ...