What is the purpose of "flowering", purely for pollination purposes?

Question

how do flowers pollinate one another?

how can you tell if a flower is female or male?

do all plants have gender or not?

which kinds do and which maybe dont?

Answer 1

This is how plants "bang" one another.

Answer 2

Pollination, which is the application of a pollen to the stigma occurs through transmission by insects, or by pollen being blown on the wind.
Insect pollinated plants have flowers designed to attract their particular pollinator, and tend to have large , colourful flowers.
Wind-pollinated plants have male organs like catkins, which wave in the wind to disperse the pollen. The female organs of these plants are usually small and insignificant, as they have no need to attract insect pollinators.

Incidentally, you have to differentiate between pollination and fertilization. Pollination is the application of pollen to the stigma. However the pollen might be from another genus or species, and nothing further happens. It is only when the stigma recognises the chemical signature of its own species, that it creates the condition for a pollen tube to develop, which passes down the style into the ovary and the sex cells from the pollen pass down this tube and fuse with the sex cells in the ovum. This fusion is known as fertilization.

The second part of your question concerns the gender of plants.

There are some genera which have separate male and female flowers on the same plant. An example of this is the hazel (Corylus avellana) which has male flowers in the form of catkins, and tiny red female flowers. The term for this kind of plant, where there are separate male and female flowers on the same plant is known as monoecious, from the Greek for 'one household'.

There are other genera of plants in which an individual plant only bears flowers of one sex. An example of one such is the holly (Ilex). It therefore common to talk about a male or female holly. The term for plants who only bear flowers of one sex is dioecious, from the Greek for 'two households'

If a plant has flowers containing both the male and female organs, then it is referred to as hermaphrodite. Thus it will have both the male organ - the anthers, and the female organs - the stigma, style and ovary in each flower.

Answer 3

Some flowers can self-pollinate because they have both male and female reproductive organs. These are known as "perfect" flowers I believe, and there is no intervention needed. Pepper plants are an example of this.

Other flowers (most I think) need to be pollenated by creatures like bees that go flower-to-flower and get the pollen attached to their sticky bodies and transfer it to other flowers. The bright flowers are designed to attract animals to help pollenate them. It is a symbiotic relationship... the bees and hummingbirds drink nectar out of the plant to survive, and they transfer pollen by doing so, helping the plants survive.

If you want to pollinate these flowers yourself, you can do it by gently putting a Q-tip into one flower and collecting the pollen (it's a yellow powder), and going between all the flowers rubbing the pollen into them.

Most plants are assexual (both male and female,) but some plants such as the kiwi plant come in separate male and female plants, you need both to get fruit.

Answer 4

Someone should tell you about the birds and bees
see http://www.pmac.net/birdbee.htm

Remember, sex is a killer.
become an amoeba and live forever