![]() The colonial explorers were lucky to happen upon the flower when they did. Meet the world's largest flower on the next page. We'll also look at some unique flowers that could add interest and conversation starters to your landscape. In this article, we'll examine 10 very unusual flowers, from bizarre tropical blooms that mimic carrion to native North American flesh eaters. There are, however, some uncommon flowers that you can safely harbor in your garden or on your window sill. Appeal to human sensibilities isn't foremost in their reproductive struggle, and who wants to be known as the neighbor who cultivated the stinkiest flower in the world, or "Audrey III"? Most of these couldn't survive in a suburban garden, and you probably wouldn't want them to. Some tropical flowers go to extremes in size, odor and survival strategies. More than 60 percent of these grow in the warm, wet climate of tropical rainforests source: Marent]. There are currently 235,000 known species of flowers in the world, and more are discovered every year. One species, the bee orchid (Ophrys apifera) of the British Isles, mimics a female bee in appearance and scent to attract the earlier hatching male bees that spread its pollen around. ![]() There are least 28,000 species and more than 300,000 cultivars of orchids, with more developing almost daily. The orchid family, Orchidacaea, is the largest and most diverse family of flowering plants. Successful plants developed flowers that deliver the particular stimuli required to interest their pollinating partners, as well as hospitable physical traits, such as landing platforms for insects. Bees, bats, birds, butterflies and other pollinators respond to different stimuli. ![]() ![]() ĭuring that 130 million years, flowers took on an amazing variety of shapes, colors and scents in their efforts to attract the creatures they need to complete pollination and produce seeds for the next generation. Angiosperms, the flowering plants, popped without precursors into the fossil record during the middle of the Cretaceous Period, about 130 million years ago. These conifers show up in fossils dating back 360 million years. Gymnosperms reproduce through seeds housed in cones. Not all seed-producing plants flower, though. Flowering plants are seed-producing members of the plant kingdom. ![]()
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