Have you ever wandered past a Gloucestershire Florist such as http://flowershedtewkesbury.co.uk/ and marvelled at the beautiful flowers that are displayed and how the staff inside can seem to create the most amazing bouquets from a mixture of all of these flower varieties.
Flowers and other plants are incredible organisms and they can be produced from both bulbs and tubers as well as seeds. Bulb and tubers are tiny little energy sources that contain all the energy and nutrients that the plant needs until it has emerged from below the ground and is able to photosynthesis for itself using sunlight and water. When the plant dies back all of the energy and sugars that are remaining in the plant revert back to the bulb ready for it to be stored until the following flowering season. Seeds operate in a similar way but they contain less energy and nce the plant has grown it will need to be pollinated in order to produce and disperse its own seeds. This dispersal can take place via the wind, birds, animals that eat the seed pods and from simply dropping from the plant or seed pods that appear to explode the seeds it holds over the ground below.
Seeds are created through pollination which involves two key areas of the plant – the stigma and the stamen. These are tubular parts of a plant that form a travel tube to the fertile parts of the plant. When pollen is dropped onto the ends of the stamen either through the wind blowing it from adjacent plants or more likely carried on the legs and bodies of small insects, it then travels dob ti ge ovary through a tube known as the style. When it reaches the ovary it fertilises the ovules which then turn into seeds.
Once the flowers bloom and die back the seeds are usually produced and they are then either scattered naturally in a variety of ways as mentioned above or through collection and planting by hand. This will often lay dormant until the Spring when the seeds will feel the warmth of the soil and warm up and begin germination for themselves. When you buy seeds from a shop they will have been collected from the plants in the previous year.
So next time you walk past that florist you will understand the process by which the plant has created those wonderful blooms.