Sex Ed: Anatomy lesson Part I

 Flowers

I understand you may have had some encounters with flowers already.  You may have smelled some roses, perhaps even blown a dandelion or two.  So before you get too serious, there are a few things you should know.  The time has come in your life for you to learn your way around a plant.  Please, keep the giggling to a minimum.  

"Boys have a penis and girls have a vagina"                                                                                     "Tanks for da tip"

Flowers have either male parts, female parts, or both.  When it’s one or the other they are referred to as “imperfect” flowers and a flower that swings both ways is referred to as a “perfect” or “complete” flower.  These parts generally serve the same function as their human counterparts – to facilitate sex.  The male parts produce pollen and sperm which, when in contact with the female organs, cause fertilization and subsequently a baby (seeds/fruit).  Pretty simple, right?  Good, now let’s get to some nudity.

Please.  Be mature.

Flowers are connected to the rest of the plant by a short stem called a peduncle.  While it does sound like a portmanteau of “pedophile uncle”, the peduncle serves no real sexual purpose.  It does contain circulatory (vascular) tissue that keeps the juices flowing to the sexy bits but we’ll cover fluids later.

Moving upwards is the Calyx (Kay-licks or Cal-icks).  The calyx is the term for the leafy bits that cover the flower when it is still closed in a bud (individually they are known as sepals).  When the flower opens, it rolls back and reveals the more sensitive parts of the flower.  In this way, it is much like a foreskin except for a plant.  Often they are left behind even when the flower sets fruit.  You may recognize the calyx as the leafy part on a strawberry.  At this point I feel like I should have a suggestive picture of a strawberry with heavy felatio connotations, but that’s too easy.

Next we have the petals, which are the delicate, showy, outer tissue that surrounds the sex organs.  Much like the labia, they can be lip-like (labia comes from the word “labium” which means lip [wikipedia]), showy, prominent or barely there.  Flower petals attract pollinators, directing them to the parts your peduncle isn’t supposed to touch. 

Kiss from a rose....  Who is over 18, I swear.

This leads us to the eponymous Stamens and pistils.  These are the sex organs.  The penis and the vagina. The pistil is the female bit.  It has three main parts – the stigma, the style, and the ovary.  The stigma is literally a pollen receptacle and the style is the bit that connects the stigma to the ovary.   The ovary is the swollen base of the pistil, contains the ovules and when it is fertilized it swells to become a fruit which contains seeds.  The pistil is basically a (nearly) complete analogue for a vagina.  

On the left, a vagina.  On the right, an upside down pistil.

Yes, this will be on the exam.

Meanwhile we have the stamens.  They are phallic and blow loads of pollen everywhere.  They have two parts, the anther (the head) and the filament (the shaft).  That might be overly simplistic but its all we need to know.  Confused by jargon yet?  Here’s a requisite sex ed. diagram.  

Female (pistil) structures are labeled in pink.  Male (stamen) structures in black.

That’s essentially your basic anatomy of a flower.  Flowers vary wildly, and it can be difficult to identify even the most basic structures.  Some flowers have only male parts, some have only female parts.  Some flowers have both.  Some flowers have big long pistils, some have tiny stamens.  Sometimes sepals look like petals.  Sometimes everything looks like nothing you’ve seen before and you just give up completely.  Most importantly though, each flower is unique and beautiful in its own right and fulfils an important purpose in a plants life.  Reproduction.  

And now that I’ve tried to instill you with a sense of self confidence regarding the nature of natures’ genitals, I will leave you to your notes and your uncomfortable feelings.  Oh and that bit of plant porn earlier that looked like a vagina?  That’s a begonia.  You’re welcome.

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Picture sources

http://www.osovo.com/diagram/vaginadiagram.htm

http://greenspade.com/pistil-pis%C2%B7til

References

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labia

All unsourced photographs taken by J.Crandall