How Do Flowers Reproduce Sexually?

While beautiful to behold, flowers are designed solely to reproduce the plant. They usually have both male and female reproduction organs, roughly similar to human sexual organs. In reproduction, most plants must spread pollen to other flowers to make seeds.

Pollinators

• flowers, little red flower image by Astroid from Fotolia.com

  Flowers begin the reproduction process by attracting bees, butterflies and other pollinators through their brightly colored petals, scents and locations on stems that wave in the air. Pollinators enter flowers to gather pollen and nectar.

Male Reproductive Organs

• Filaments holding anthers and pollen stamen of a yellow flower image by Fotocie from Fotolia.com

  Most flowers have both a stamen, the male flower part, and a pistil, the female flower part. The stamen consists of paired anthers, sacs which hold pollen -- the male reproductive cells, or sperm -- on long, thin stalks, called filaments. As pollinators move around in a flower, pollen sticks to their legs or underside of their bodies.

Female Reproductive Organs

• A style and stigma pistil image by brice negre from Fotolia.com

  Pollen is distributed to female reproductive organs as pollinators visit other flowers. The pistil has three parts: a stigma, style and ovary. The stigma is the sticky surface at the pistil's top, which holds pollen from pollinators' bodies. The tube-like structure that supports the stigma is the style, which leads down to the ovary. The ovary contains ovules, or egg cells.

Fertilization

• In the fertilization process, pollen travels down the style from the stigma, enters the ovary, and joins with an ovule, fertilizing it. The fertilized ovule is the plant's seed. When the seed sprouts, reproduction is completed.