Plant biology- plant reproduction question?

Question

I am learning about plants. I just found out that flowers have sex organs. Does that mean that bees are vital to the survival of plant species? Do bees start the plant's process of reproduction by pollenating the flower? What if a plant doesn't have a flower? How does that plant reproduce?

Answer 1

As Ivorytower said, some plants (mosses, lichens, ferns, fern allies such as club mosses) reproduce asexually, that is, they do not have "male" and "female" sex cells (egg or sperm).

Conifers (e.g. pine trees) don't have flowers; they have structures like catkins and little tiny brush-like structures amongst their needles that have on them the exposed sex cells (called gametes). There is one type of structure for the male gamete and one type for the female. Conifers produce huge amounts of pollen that is released to the air in one great poof, ideally to fall on the female structures. You can sometimes see this by carefully watching a big conifer in late spring. You may have noticed all the yellow dust on the ground, on cars, etc in late spring? That's pine pollen.

Many plants "self-pollinate" (need no bee or fly or other pollinator), which means that the male and female structures are both in the same flower and the pollen can be transferred to the egg by a small movement of the flower by wind, an animal, etc. I'm working on an invasive weed that does this--very hard to eradicate it if it needs no pollinator!

Answer 2

Bees pollinate some species of flowers. Other flowers are pollinated by wind, water or other animals (bats, beetles, birds, butterflies, moths, etc.). Polen has male sex cells that fertilize the egg in the female part of the flower (the pistil). Many lower plants (ferns, mosses, evergreens) don't make flowers, although they do have sex organs. Many other plants reproduce asesually by cloning themselves.