Hermaphrodite plants: what are, characteristics and examples

The sexual organs of the plants are found in The flowers and female and masculine parts can be differentiated:

• The female part It receives the name of gynece and consists of stigma, which is where pollen, style is received, which supports stigma, and ovary, which will mature and give rise to the fruit if the flower is pollinated.
• The male part It is called Androceo, and consists of Antera and Filament. The antera is the organ that contains pollen and filament is a stem of little thickness that supports it.

Taking this into account, we can say that a plant is hermaphrodite when it has flowers in which the parts of both sexes are, also called Perfect flowers. The parts of hermaphrodite plants They are the same, simply flowers contain both sexual organs. Not all flowers of a hermaphrodite plant will contain both gynece and Androceo necessarily; It is common for perfect flowers and a single sex to coexist.

Monoic and dioic plants

Plants whose flowers are not perfect They can be monoic or dioic.

• In monoic plants, a single individual contains flowers of both sexes, but differentiated, so they are hermaphrodites. The usual thing is that the female flowers are in the lower part of the plant, while the masculine are at the upper end, so that they facilitate the transport of pollen through the wind.
• Dioica plants, on the other hand, are totally unisexual: each individual produces only female or masculine flowers, so they are always biparental or opposite to the hermaphrodites. This is a strategy to avoid autogamy, thus ensuring the plant not to reproduce with itself and thus achieve a greater genetic variety.

Learn more about the flowers with this other ecology article about the parts of a flower and its functions.

These are the main characteristics of hermaphrodite plants:

• As we have mentioned before, the main characteristic of hermaphrodite plants is that they produce Flowers with the sexual organs of both sexes.
• This allows them to reproduce more easily, being an especially important mechanism in unfavorable environments for insects or pollinating animals. Some hermaphrodite plants, in fact, regularly resort to autogamy, that is, that pollinate themselves.
• Autogamy From hermaphrodite plants it can be forced, or simply coexist with the usual reproduction methods, so that it improves the possibilities of survival of the species without giving up genetic variability.
• Some hermaphrodite plants turn to Cleistogamia. This is a type of autogamy in which the flower does not even open its petals and sepals, but remains closed and fertilizes itself. It is a very safe method to ensure the spread of its genetic material, although renouncing diversity.
• Other species of hermaphrodite plants, precisely to avoid this autogamy, which may not favor some plants, resort to different types of self -incompatibility to ensure their Genetic diversity. They can make the gametes of different sexes of the flower ripen in different times so as not to be able to self -feed, or that the plant has filters or other systems that separate their own pollen.

There are a lot of hermaphrodite plants that are used regularly in agriculture. These are some Hermaphrodite plants names Common: tomatoes, peppers and corn. Their main advantage lies in how easy it is to reproduce them, since they are not dependent on pollinating insects. In addition, some hermaphrodite flowers give rise to fruits other than those produced by the flowers of a single sex, sometimes more commercially appreciated. We speak in more detail of these examples of hermaphrodite plants:

Tomato

In the case of tomatoes, scientific name Solanum lycopersicumwe talk about one of the best known plants worldwide. Its flowers are hermaphrodites and self -feed. It does not produce nectar, because it does not need to attract pollinators, and its stamens are large and form a closed tube that surrounds the pistil, ensuring fertilization.

The pollen follows from the stamens in the face of any vibration or movement, whether they are caused by insects and by the wind, or even by human action.

Corn

Corn or Zea maysanother of the most widespread crops worldwide, is also a hermaphrodite plant and is a monoic plant. Hermaphrodite is considered because she can fertilize herself, but produces flowers of both sexes separately.

In the corn, the male flower, popularly called Panoja, grows at the upper end of the plant as spikes, while the female grow below, at a medium or low height of the stem. This causes that when the wind blows or the plant moves, the male flower releases the pollen and can fertilize its own female flowers, although these female flowers can also receive the pollen of the masculine from another nearby corn plant, giving rise to a hybrid in this case.

If you want to learn more about how plants reproduce, here we leave you information about the reproduction of plants.

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