Flowers are beautiful things that make great gifts, but before we cut them and put them into a bouquet, they're living things. Like all living things, flowers go through a life cycle that's sort of like ours, growing from small sprouts to blossom into full-grown flowers. And like humans, flowers reproduce, making the next generation of flowers, before they die. Exactly how all of this works is a really interesting process that involves seeds, insects, soil, sunlight, and air.

Germination

Flowers start as seeds. Seeds need water, warmth, and soil to grow into flowers. When they have all of these things, the seeds will absorb water until their hard outer shells break open. Inside will be a tiny sprout, which has two ends: a root at one end and a shoot at the other. The root grows downward into the soil and starts absorbing water and nutrients. The shoot grows upward out of the ground and unfolds its little leaves to absorb sunlight.

• How Does a Seed Become a Plant?
• Germinate Seeds and Watch Them Grow
• What Is Germination?
• Seed Germination Experiment
• Germination Facts

Growth

Once the seed germinates into a seedling, it keeps growing. To do this, the flower absorbs water and nutrients from the ground and sunlight through its leaves, and then it combines all of those things in a process called photosynthesis. Photosynthesis is how a flower makes its own food. It uses the food to grow bigger. Then, the bigger roots can collect more water and nutrients, and bigger leaves can collect more sunlight, so the plant can make more food for itself. In this way, the flower keeps growing until it's a full-size plant with a stem and leaves. Some flowering plants are just one stem, while others actually grow as a whole bush. Either way, once the plant is grown up, it can make one or more flowers.

• What Do Plants Need to Grow?
• Peep Plants a Seed
• What Is Photosynthesis?
• How Photosynthesis Works
• Plant Parts

Flowering

When a plant is big enough and the weather is just right, it will grow one or more flower buds. Each flower bud will then open into a flower. The flower has pretty petals that are often brightly colored and usually smell nice. It also has other parts toward the center, inside of the petals. If you look really closely, you'll see tiny stems with little yellow bits on top. These are the stamens, which are the male parts of the flower. The yellow powdery stuff on the tops of the stamens is pollen. In the middle of all of that, there's one bigger stalk, which is the pistil. This is the female part of the flower.

• Reproduction in Flowering Plants
• Why Do Flowers Bloom?
• Flower Power
• Flower Parts and Facts
• Parts of a Flower

Seed Formation

When a pretty, sweet-smelling flower blossoms, the color and scent attract pollinators like bees and butterflies. These pollinators will visit the flower looking for nectar to eat. Nectar is made at the base of the petals of most flowers, so the pollinators have to go way into the middle of the flower to get it. When they do that, some of the pollen from the stamens comes off and gets stuck on their bodies. Then, when the pollinator flies to a different flower, some of the pollen can fall off onto the pistil of that flower. The pollen grows down into the middle of the pistil, where there's a part called the ovary. When this happens, the flower's seeds form.

• Pollinator Pathway
• What Is Pollination?
• The Why, What, When, Where, Who, How of Pollination
• Pollinators
• The Beauty of Pollination

Seed Dispersal

Once a flower is ready to make seeds, it doesn't need to spend any of its energy on growing anything else anymore. It doesn't need to get bigger, and it doesn't need its petals anymore, either. It just focuses on growing its seeds, and eventually, the petals die and fall off. Once the seeds are grown, they need to go off into the world to become their own flowers. This part of the flower life cycle is called seed dispersal. Seeds can be dispersed by the wind; if you've even made a wish on a dandelion, you've seen how seeds can float away when you blow on them. They can also get stuck in animals' fur and be carried away that way. And some plants with flowers will grow fruits around their seeds. These fruits are then eaten by animals, and when the animals poop, the seeds are there, ready to make new flowers.

• The Traveling Seed
• Seed Dispersal
• Seven Brilliant Ways Seeds and Fruits Are Dispersed
• Study Shows Bear Poop Is Important for Seed Dispersal
• Learn How Seeds Travel

Additional Resources

• The Great Plant Escape: In Search of Green Life
• Pollinator Match-Up
• Photosynthesis for Kids
• Pollinator Word Search
• Photosynthesis 101
• Parts of a Flower Game
• Plant Daddy Game
• From Seed to Fruit
• Send Flowers Online
• The Lives of Flowering Plants
• Flower to Seed, Seed to Flower
• Seeing Seeds
• Flowering Plant Activity Packet
• Flower Arrangements
• Seed Dispersal Worksheet
• Flower Anatomy Worksheet

 

This article was posted by Chad Kremp