Chapter Questions
What is another name for the flowering plants?
Name the apomorphies of the flowering plants.
What is the definition of a flower?
Name the major components of a typical flower.
Describe the morphology and adaptive significance of the perianth.
What is the "ABC" model of floral development, and what species served as the original exemplar for this?
What was a major selective pressure that resulted in the evolution of specialized types of flowers?
What is unique about the angiosperm stamen, and what are the types and parts of a stamen?
What is a theca and of what is it composed?
What about the male gametophyte of flowering plants is unique?
Describe the structure and function of a mature male gametophyte in the flowering plants.
What is the definition of a carpel?
What is the difference between carpel, pistil, and gynoecium?
Name and describe two major adaptive features of the carpel.
Contrast integument number in gymnosperms versus that in angiosperms.
Draw and label a mature female gametophyte in the flowering plants.
How many cells and nuclei are present in a typical, mature, female gametophyte of the flowering plants?
How might the reduced angiospermous female gametophyte be adaptive?
What is endosperm and what is its function?
What is the difference between a sieve cell and a sieve tube member? In what groups are each found?
What type of tracheary element do most angiosperms have, and what is its adaptive significance?
When are the earliest definitive angiosperm fossils found?
Describe the example of Caytonia and glossopterids as putative angiosperm progenitors, citing evidence for or against this idea.
Describe the reproductive structure of Archaefructus and indicate two competing hypotheses for its homology.