kklemow at WILKES1.WILKES.EDU
Mon Nov 18 20:18:08 EST 1996
Scott Shumway asks:
>If dioecious plants have male and female flowers on separate plants and
>monoecious plants have male and female flowers on the same plants, then are
>plants with perfect flowers also considered to be monoecious? My
>impression is that the answer is "no", but I have never been able to figure
>out WHY. Can someone straighten me out? Thank you.
Using the term monoecious to refer to bisexual plants with unisexual
flowers, and not for plants with bisexual flowers makes a lot of sense to
me precisely because it conveys the idea that the flowers are unisexual,
and thus have a fundamentally different breeding system compared to plants
with bisexual flowers. As you may be aware, there is also the phenomenon
of polygamy, in which a plant can have both unisexual and bisexual flowers.
If the plant bears bisexual flowers and unisexual flowers of a single sex,
that plant would be polygamo-dioecious. If it bears bisexual, pistillate
and staminate flowers, then it would be polygamo-monecious.
Terminology relating to plant sexuality can actually get much more
intricate. Redford (1986) provides a good summary on pp. 441-444 of his
"Fundamentals of Plant Systematics" text.
Kenneth M Klemow, Ph.D.
Department of Biology
Wilkes-Barre, PA 18766
kklemow at wilkes1.wilkes.edu
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