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| the Trailing Four O’Clock, Allionia incarnata |
Most plants on
Earth reproduce using their flowers, which are equipped with male and female
sex organs. There are often negative consequences when a plant reproduces with
itself. In order to avoid this, plants have evolved techniques to keep its
flowers’ male and female sex organs separated in space and/or time. “Herkogamy”
is a term meaning the spatial separation of floral sex organs, and there are
many different kinds. The focus of this study is one particular kind of
herkogamy called “enantiostyly”, which refers to the separation of the female
floral sex organ(s) (otherwise known as a “style”) from the rest of the flower.
In plants that are bilaterally symmetrical, this generally means pointing the
style to the left or right of the line of symmetry, and styles are referred to
as being left- or right-handed.
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