Talk:Flower

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• Relief of Sassanid King giving flower to his Queen.jpg

Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 21:23, 14 October 2022 (UTC)

50 + vegetables name

There are many different types of vegetables name, but some common ones include: Cauliflower Broccoli Cabbage Brinjal Apple Gourd round bottle gourd Pumpkin Colocassia Root Lotus root Lady Finger This is just a small selection of the many types of vegetables that are available. Each type of vegetable has its own unique taste and nutritional benefits, and they can be prepared in a variety of different ways. Some popular ways to prepare vegetables include roasting, sautéing, grilling, and steaming. It’s also worth noting that many vegetables are also used in traditional dishes from around the world, for example eggplant in ratatouille, sweet potatoes in sweet potato pie, okra Harendradatta (talk) 06:51, 2 February 2023 (UTC)

@Harendradatta 181.41.81.97 (talk) 02:04, 10 February 2023 (UTC)

Non-angiosperms in main image

The article's main image contains 4 images of non-flowers: reproductive structures of Picea abies, Pinus pinaster, Equisetum arvense, and Cycas revoluta, none of which are flowering plants. 171.66.12.183 (talk) 22:18, 20 May 2023 (UTC)

Well spotted - that's been fixed now.  Junglenut |Talk  23:08, 20 May 2023 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 10 January 2024

"I Bet Your Mother Would Be Proud Of You"- Frank Ocean.... WhoBeKnockingOnTheirDoor (talk) 17:24, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

Not done: Your request doesn't seem to be relevant, provided the page. If I am misunderstanding, feel free to reply with a more specific proposition. Urropean (talk) 18:39, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

GA review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Flower/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Nominator: Dracophyllum (talk · contribs) 12:45, 23 April 2025 (UTC)

Reviewer: Chiswick Chap (talk · contribs) 16:08, 23 April 2025 (UTC)

Comments

• Firstly, congratulations on a bold edit, shortening the article and addressing many defects in this old article.
  • Thanks for the review Chiswick, I'll get to these soon. Dracophyllum 20:14, 23 April 2025 (UTC)

Ok, to work.

• The article remains overall rather heavily botanical. I did a biology degree and can read it; I doubt people without that background could cope with it. A couple of examples: "a determinate apical meristem" (what?); "microsporocytes which become pollen, the male gametophyte, after undergoing meiosis." (who? where? when?). Seriously, the average Joe can't read that sort of thing.

Morphology

• I'm doubtful of the value of trying to deal with structure independently of function, as what is happening is that the overall story is getting lost through fragmentation into separate aspects, none of which make a lot of sense on their own. ("Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution", to coin a phrase.) See 'Function' below for a suggested approach. I think the Androecium, Gynoecium sections are excessively technically named and inaccessible to most of our readers (please assume they are not botanists: they might be geologists, programmers, cooks, truck drivers — the material needs to be clear to those folks).

• 'Variation' is well-meant but it introduces numerous technical terms, or just relies upon them without explanation ("When the perianth is bisected" - who's that? how? is this geometry? help!). The section (indeed most of the article) needs to go step by step, combining text, photographs, and diagrams. Every average Joe needs a wet towel and a couple of beers to understand monoecious and dioecious, for instance: a diagram is really needed there, to name just one instance.

Function

• This section is so short as to seem orphaned. I suggest we merge it with 'Reproductive', rename and promote that to 'Reproduction', and deal with anatomy and function together so you can say what each part is for and how it works (i.e. we need to relate structure, physiology, evolutionary function and adaptations to form a single story).

Pollination

• Why is this separated from reproduction?

• Average Joe: isn't pollination the same as fertilisation? No? Why not? Diagram please.

Fertilisation and seed development

• Why is this separated from reproduction?

• Average Joe: what has fruit got to do with flowers? That's the level of explanation we need here before we go into exocarps and all th rest. Where is the diagram that shows flowers turning into fruits?

= Seed dispersal

• Why is this separated from reproduction?

• How is seed different from pollen? Average Joe thinks they're the same, more or less.

Evolution

• This gives a fair overview of the history (minimal detail, but that's reasonable in this context), but it omits coevolution with pollinators (flies, then bees...) which is crucial here; and evolutionary pressure continues now, so focus on 100 mya etc here is only half the story. See Entomophily, Coevolution for instance. We need some sort of summary of this in big-picture style.

Colour

• What is this chapter for?

• Why is this separated from reproduction?

• We need to relate physiology (biochemistry, pigments, structural coloration) to evolution rather more firmly. Yes you mention "benefits to the plant" but we need to be upfront about coevolution and signals to pollinators; indeed, the whole thing needs to be tied to evolution.

Images

• Lead: the old set of 12 images was good on simple flowers but failed to suggest the range of more complex types. The new set of 4 images does the reverse, with two showy blooms (one of them a cultivated rose, an odd choice for the lead really), an odd-looking orchid, and a Dracophyllum that would seem an odd choice (I note your username...), specially in a subset of 4 images only. I think the selection needs to be revisited, making the selection criteria clearer. For instance, we could have a simple radially-symmetric flower like a buttercup, a bilaterally-symmetric one like a peaflower or labiate, a compound flower, and a more specialized one like a Cymbidium orchid (and we say so in the caption(s)). I'm open to suggestions but we do need to have a plan.
  • I knew I wasn't going to get away with the Dracophyllum, haha. My rationale was: complex flower showing coevolution (my impression was that it was evolved to look like the bird but now I'm not so sure that is the case), a common flower with classic structure, a symmetric flower, and an inflorescence. Dracophyllum 22:40, 23 April 2025 (UTC)

• Not convinced the image in 'Reproductive' is ideal; for instance the petals are poorly shown, and carpels, receptacle, and sepals are not visible. We want an image that presents the relationship of the parts clearly and simply.

• The 'Inflorescence' image is not ideal either, as it really isn't even clear why it's an inflorescence. We want something that makes it obvious that we have many flowers together, preferably showing obviously different and easily visible male and female flowers. Other Araceae would be a lot clearer.

• The caption in 'Abiotic pollination' "pollinated through a combination of hyphydrogamy and ephydrogamy" will be incomprehensible to nearly all readers looking for information.

• The 'Self-pollination' image gives no visible clue to the mechanism. It may be that no image will work here (in which case we shouldn't have one); this one certainly doesn't.
  • removed Dracophyllum 23:08, 23 April 2025 (UTC)

• The old-fashioned drawing in 'Fertilisation and seed development' doesn't work well, with its brown background and small incomprehensible letters in place of labels. We need to do better than that.

• I'm sorry to keep complaining but the 'Seed dispersal' images give me a lot of background greenery and not much in the way of explanation, in other words they're not clear and expressive. Why don't we have some dandelion-type seeds blowing in the wind, some hooked seeds attached to an animal's fur, a bird or mammal eating a fruit, and a splitting pod ejecting its seeds? It'd be many times clearer. I'm open to many other options as long as they're clear.

• What is the set of 'Colour' images meant to be conveying? The caption says 2 are iridescent (how is the reader to see that, it's not at all obvious from the images), one is "photonic" (what's that?), and one is "purple-coloured", how does that help. Again, surely we can do better than that.
  • Images are to convey some of the diversity in colour of flowers and diversity in the ways in which they achieve being noticed in that way. Dracophyllum 23:04, 23 April 2025 (UTC)

• Linnaeus's 24-part system in 'Taxonomy' is ok as a start, but given that it's way obsolete, we really can't stop at that; there must be at least one more modern image to show that we've moved on from there.

• 'In culture' has dropped all the old images; several were probably not worth their weight, but the still life was a good image for the topic, while the use for worship does deserve an image and the Varanasi image was clear (a human hand, worship object, flowers) and informative on that aspect. I'd say that an image of a flower festival or market (or both) was also well-justified here; if not also of a wedding, for instance. That would make a gallery of about 4 carefully-selected images that would enhance the section.
  • Good idea, I've added a gallery. Dracophyllum 23:02, 23 April 2025 (UTC)

• Image licenses: ......

Sources

• [28] and [37] Leins 2018, and [32] AusínAlonso-BlancoMartínez-Zapater 2005 do not point to any citation. I note that Ausin 2005 and Leins 2010 are currently unused, so these are probably the broken connections.

• Fritsch Salisbury 1920 and Robledo-Arnuncio 2011 are unused.

• ......

Summary

• The comments above illustrate and identify two serious issues with the current article text:

• • Firstly, the article is not structured to present clearly the intimate connection between flower structure and function and the pollinators (and to an extent also the seed dispersers) that coevolved with the flowering plants.

• • Secondly, that story (where it is told at all) is not told simply and clearly enough, with text supported by diagrams and perhaps photographs, to enable the Average Joe to grasp the fundamental points in the flower story.

• (first reading is still in progress, more comments to follow throughout) ...