Flower Pictures
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Flower Blossoms: Wherein Lies their Greatest Beauty? Great images - pictures of flowers For many of us, sight of a flower stirs our soul. A flower or a flower painting or photograph is capable sometimes of causing utter awe and wonder, and of course, flowers provide vivid color to the our endless landscapes. For as long as there have been humans there have been flowers, and like humans, flowers are one of nature’s more modern inventions. Fossil records show that as recent as 250 million years ago flowers were yet to emerge. Flowers occurred on plants gradually as a more efficient means of ovary fertilization took hold. For most of us, from time to time there is renewed surprise as we realize once again that flowers are the sexual organs of plants. Flower color and structure are for the express purpose of attracting pollinators. These pollinators, usually insects, and flowers have evolved together, and it seems that flowers have evolved for the delight of the pollinators, not humans. It is merely a footnote in the history of flowers that we humans have come to adore them so.
Scientists disagree on whether insects or flowers evolved first, or if they evolved together, but it is clear that it took a long time for a new order of plants called angiosperms, to appear. This process may have started with a few leaves oozing sticky excess carbohydrates that insects found tasty. Gradually bunches of leaves around the plant’s sexual organs may have evolved with enough appealing color and nutrition to lure insects. These were the first flowers, often simple bowl shapes with leaf-like petals. The male organs were exposed, but the female ovaries and seeds were hidden away for protection from weather and predators. Sometimes primitive beetles crawled hungrily over these plants, munching on them and accidentally transferring male pollen to the female parts, while early bees and wasps flew in to feed at the flowers, offering a more dependable sexual transfer than wind or water.
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The flowering angiosperms have branched into today’s myriad of brilliantly diverse varieties. The colors we swoon over are adaptations to a constantly changing array of new insects and situations. We also marvel that some flying insects, like bees, butterflies and moths, have grown to rely on flowers for nourishment, and they are usually quite specialized, with unique features, such as extra-long tongues to reach nectars, and often the life cycle of the pollinator is tightly meshed with that of the plant whose flower lures it. If you do not have a flower blossom nearby in which to find wonder, consider viewing photos of some of the world’s most extraordinary blooms. You may lose yourself for minutes or hours at a single bloom, as do the pollinators. Questions we flower lovers may enjoy pondering as we gaze at and revel in the magnificent structure and color of a bloom are: When these insects and other pollinators feed and find shelter at flowers, do they have an idea of the sexual favors they are performing for the plants, and do they marvel as we at the floral form and function, as they forage? In which is there greater beauty to behold, the flower’s form or its function?
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