Flowers, the gorgeous reproductive method of most plants on Earth, carry with them both beauty and purpose. They serve as food for numerous creatures in nature and decorations for many homes around the world. The origins of these blooms, however, are quite the mystery. A dearth of flower fossils from the time in which the ancestral flower is believed to have existed is to blame, and it has left scientists wondering what this particular ancestor could have looked like. A new study, however, aims to unravel this mystery.
According to BBC’s article, scientists gathered and recorded the features of about 792 flowers. They then “mapped the distribution of these features on to the evolutionary tree of flowering plants enabling them to build a picture of what flowers looked like at key points in their history – including the last common ancestor of all living flowers”.
The reconstruction of this ancestral flower appeared to be in a whorl-like arrangement, similar to how the petals of a common lily appear. This was a surprise to scientists, as it has been commonly assumed that the first flower had more of a spiral arrangement, similar to a lotus flower.
In addition, the sexual evolution of flowers has been debated for quite some time. Flowers can either be unisexual (containing either male or female organs) or bisexual (containing both male and female organs). The study implies that the first flower was a bisexual flower.
Since the fossil information on flowers is so scarce, it is difficult to say exactly how flowers evolved. With this new study, though, scientists are better able to map out the possibilities. The first flower could be more complicated than originally believed. Now, the hunt is on to find this flower, or something very similar to it, within the narrow library of fossil records.
