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Garden Word of the Day
Are you fed up with greed?
Tell everyone how you feel.
#EnoughAlready
Tell everyone how you feel.
#EnoughAlready
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When you look at a flower, you probably notice the petals first. Bright colors and brilliant arrangements attract people and pollinators alike. All of those petals together are called the flower’s corolla, or inner perianth. At the base of that corolla, you will sometimes see a green cup shape made up of lobes. The lobes together are called the calyx, or outer perianth. Each lobe, individually, is called a sepal. Supportive sepals Sepals encase a bud before the flower blooms, providing protection. Usually, after the flower blooms, the plant has no use for the sepal and it is allowed to whither. Some flowers retain their sepals, using the cup-like structure for added support for the flower. In some cases, such as oyster plants, the sepals are quite large and they protect the nyctinastic flower during the afternoon and through the night. Tomatillos and groundcherries, however, put their sepals to work as papery outer coverings for their precious fruit. These protective bladders help keep birds and insect pests away. Sepal description
Like flower petals, sepals are modified leaves. While often smaller than the petals, sepals can be longer and larger. Sepals can look like teeth, ridges, or scales, especially on plants in the grain family, or they can look like leaves or petals. Normally green, they can also be very colorful and may look like petals. When the petals and sepals are too difficult to tell apart, they are called tepals. Flowers with tepals are called petaloid. Tulips and aloe plants are petaloid. Sepal attachment Some sepals are attached or fused to each other (gamosepalous), while others are separate from one another (ploysepalous). When the sepals are fused toward the base, as in the case of legumes and pomegranates, they form a calyx tube. In the rose and myrtle plant families, this structure is called the hypanthium. Sepal count and plant classification The number of sepals present can help with plant identification. The number of sepals is called its merosity. Eudicots generally have a merosity of four or five, while monocots and palaeodicots have a merosity of three. If you see a flower with 4 or 8 sepals, you will know that it is a eudicot. If it has 3, 6, or 9 sepals, it is either a monocot or a palaeodicot. If is has 15 sepals, well, you’re on your own. Comments are closed.
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