Why Are Flowers Important to the Earth
Flowers play an integral role in the movement of the seasons, providing primary-produced sugars for insects, habitat for microorganisms, and seeds for propagation of plant species. A flower is the sexually reproducing organ of a plant, whereby genetics are intermixed and evolution can occur. All higher life forms, such as animals and humans, could not exist without flowers and the primary producers which first fix the sunlight into edible forms.
Flower parts and pollination:
flowers consists of brightly colored petals to attract insects, the vectors of their pollen. Within the petals are the sexual organs, the pistil
and the the stamens. As an insect approaches the center of the flower to drink of the sugars (nectar) produced there, pollen from the
from the stamens typically adhere to their bodies. At the same time, pollen from other plants of the same species may get transferred
from the insect to the pistil of the plant and the pollen may then fertilize the flower.
Fertilization:
After a pollen grain has been transferred from one plant to the pistil of another, of the same species, the pollen grain grows a pollen tube
into the ovary beneath the pistil. Here the floral genetics are combined via the coupling of gametes and seeds are born. Most plants
Most plant species cannot self-pollinate, as this lessens diversity, and must be pollinated by another individual of the same species for
fertilization to occur.
Food:
Flowers are primary producers -- they manufacture simple sugars from photosynthesis. These sugars feed a whole variety of insects,
from aunts to butterflies, bees to beetles. Many insects are specialized to specific flowers, in a mutualism or obligatory symbiosis.
Orchids, especially, have a very specific and integrated life-cycle with certain bees and wasps, as do certain types of fruit, such as the
fig In turn, these insects provide food for birds and secondary consumers. Flowers are as important to the earth as grasses and all plants
flowers are the means by which most plants continue their species, providing food for all higher forms of life. For example, foods such
as oranges, corn, barley, bread, saffron, coconut, shiitake, or any other mushrooms, fruit, herb, or grain, rely on flowers for their
genesis.
Medicine:
flowers are specialize in certain nutrients and chemicals in surprising arrays. In fact, plants and flowers are evolved intelligences for
the transportation of water and the self-directing of certain elements, molecules, and polymers. Different plants may have surprisingly
diverse sets of polymers ,some of which are poisonous, others are others curative, still more psychoactive. In short, flowers offer a
natural natural medicine cabinet for the discerning botanist, a ready cure for nearly all of nature's ills. In the Amazon, for just one
example, certain cures are made by shamans for diabetes modern science is still incapable of replicating them, although their effects have
been observed. This is one prime reason, among many more, of preserving rain forests. There are so many species of plants in such
areas, it is believed by some scientists that less than five percent of all plant species in the Amazon have been classified, and still many
more have been made extinct.
Soils:
Everything on Earth is integrated so that no single life exists without affecting another. Flowers, and the plants that bloom them, play a
vital role in transforming soil substrates into organic horizons, layers of mineral-soils that have been transformed into organic matter by
matter by the life and death of plants. These soils become more fertile and better suited for sustaining the growth and proliferation of
plants species. This is how life exerts a preference upon the conditions most favorable for its own development. In other words, one of
the prime functions of life and flowers is to force a selection-pressure upon natural conditions, concluding in self-sustained existence
whereby life, in all forms, proliferates over time.
symbolism and the poetry of life :
flowers have long been symbols of mortality, beauty, and love. Because flowers are produced during natural cycles plant cycles
integrated with the moon, the Sun, and the movement of the seasons, themselves symbolic of change, growth and diminution, life
and death.-- they are ephemeral: They bud, bloom, and decay. Such beauty is all the more startling because it is temporary.
Flowers near perfectly embody this glorious temporariness, where everything is constantly turning into everything else. Through the
temporary the permanent is maintained. Through the mortal the immortal is glimpsed. And by their mere existence, which is infinite in
in beauty and possibility, if limited in time and materiality, they make further life all the more possible. And, perhaps more importantly,
enjoyable.
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