Osage-orange (Maclura pomifera, family Moraceae) is a medium-sized tree that is distinctive now because of its softball-sized multiple fruits that adorn the branches and then fall to the ground. The Moraceae is the mulberry family and, like mulberries, the huge Osage-oranges are actually clusters of many small fruits tightly packed together, derived from a head-like cluster of small individual flowers.

The apparent lack of animal dispersers has lead some people to suggest that Maclura pomiferais an "anachronistic plant," i.e., one having an evolutionarily co-adaptive connection with one or more animals that are now extinct. As recently as 10,000 years ago, there were numerous large animals ("megafauna"), such as mastodons, mammoths, horses, and many others that are no longer with us. Perhaps they liked these big green mulberries. On the other hand there are a few observations in the remarkably small home range of the species --tiny portions of Texas, Oklahoma and Arkansas (home of the Osage Indians) --of squirrels eating them, and horses avoiding them.

A flower's ovary is the lowermost portion of its pistil (also called the gynoecium), the female part of the flower. The ovary contains one or more ovules, within each of which there is an egg. After a pollen grain delivers a sperm cell to fuse with the egg, a new embryo (baby plant) develops within the ovule, which eventually becomes a seed. A fruit is a ripened ovary containing seeds.  

This month, many plants are in fruit that were more conspicuous earlier, when they were in flower. They are still beautiful and intriguing while  in fruit, but they are certainly less attractive, because the portion of the flowers that served to advertise their presence to pollinating insects --the petals --have long since fallen off.

Here are several fruits of September, along with pictures (MOUSEOVER to see) showing what they looked like earlier in the season. (The flower pics may have been taken at a different location.)


 

 

 

 

The plant family Asteraceae (aster family) also has a traditional, more descriptive name: the "composite" family. This is because what looks like one big showy flower is actually a tightly packed cluster --a composite --of many small individual blooms. These flowers are sometimes of 2 different types: (1) centrally located, radially symmetric disk flowers, and (2) peripheral strap-shaped ray flowers. In the picture below, the honeybee is gathering nectar from the disk flowers while the spotted cucumber beetle is standing on a ray flower.

 
Below, a picture taken in 2007 shows individual flowers teased from a sunflower head to demonstrate the two types of flowers and show the individual parts (in some instances highly modified) that comprise a flower. Unless they are the only type present, the strap-shaped RAY FLOWERS are usually sterile, serving solely to attract pollinators as do the individual petals of a single flower, which they indeed resemble.

The central DISK FLOWERS have their OVARY way down at the bottom of the flower (this is  an "inferior ovary"). The ovary is the part that eventually develops into a dry one-seeded fruit --an achene --that is often colloquially referred to as a "seed." (A "sunflower seed" is a actually a fruit that you split open to eat the  seed inside.) Just above the ovary are the SEPALS, so highly modified they have a special name: the PAPPUS. In the sunflower the pappus is a simple pair of scale-like bristles, but in other members of the Asteraceae such as the dandelion, the pappus is an eleborate parachute-like organ that aids in fruit dispersal.

The corolla consists of 5 fused PETALS from which protrude the uppermost sexual parts of the flower: (1) the pollen-producing STAMENS which are fused into a tube through which grows the STYLE which is capped by rabbit-ear-like STIGMAS that receive pollen. Interestingly, the stamens split open and release theirn pollen towards the inside of the stamen-tube and so the pollen is presented on the non-receptive backsides of the stigmas. It looks like self-pollination, but it isn't. These flower parts are labelled in the alternate (mouseover) view of the picture below.