Solitary Flowers
They are those flowers that are not grouped into inflorescence but occur singly in two ways.
- Solitary Terminal: Single terminal flowers develop at the tip of the main stem or its branches e.g. Poppy (Papaver).
- Solitary Axillary: The flower occurs singly in the axil of a leaf (e.g., Petunia, China Rose/Shoe Flower Hibiscus rosa-Sinensis).
Inflorescence
Angiosperms (Gr. Angion = vessel; Sperma = seed) are flowering, fruit-bearing phanerogamic, spermatophytic, and sporophytic plants. They are the most recent, most advanced, most evolved, most conspicuous, and most abundant of all the plants on this earth. The study of flowering plants is called Anthology. These plants appeared in the lower cretaceous period of the Mesozoic era about 130 million years back but flourished in the Tertiary period of the Cenozoic era. The first flowering plants appeared in the Jurassic period and monocots appeared in the Oligocene period. The first angiosperm was Archaefructus from the mid-Cretaceous. They lack archegonium which is replaced by pistil (gynaecium). They have double fertilization and endosperm of triploid nature. The male gametes are nonmotile and carried by pollen tube (siphonogamy) to avoid dependence on water for fertilization. They comprise about 12500 genera and 2.68 lakh species out of which 2.20 Lakh are dicots and 50000 are monocots. Thus dicots are more than 50% of the total plants on this earth. They show great diversity in size, form, habit, habitats, life span, and mode of nutrition. They are classified into dicotyledons and monocotyledons on the basis of the number of cotyledons. Monocots are more advanced than dicots.