FLOWERING SEED PLANTS
Flowering plants can be recognized by their flowers, their fruits, or their (usually) flattened leaves with branching veins. The next few photos show a variety of Recent flowering plants.
A bromeliad inflorescence (a relative of Spanish moss!). each flower is about 1 cm long. (Photo by B. Carter.)
A cactus in flower. The pot is about 30 cm across. (Photo by B. Carter.)
The flower of Gordonia altamaha, a small tree of the southeast. The flower is 6-8cm across. The trunk in the right rear is that of the tree that bears the flower. (Photo from Baker Co. FL by B. Carter).
The fruits (berries) of an ornamental holly Ilex sp. near Plains, GA. Each berry is about 7mm across. (Photo by B. Carter.)
Fossil flowering plants are usually preserved as leaves, as in this fossil rose leaf (Rosa hilliae) from Oligocene rocks in Oregon. The scale bar is 1cm. (Photo by B. Carter.)
The final picture is of a daisy from Eocene rocks in Colorado. The disk flowers of the center of the daisy are obvious; the ray flowers ('petals') are more difficuly, though not impossible, to make out. The scale bar is 1cm. (Photo by B. Carter)
