- [Narrator] "Oklahoma Gardening" is a production of the Oklahoma Cooperative Extension Service as part of the Land Grant Mission of the Division of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources at Oklahoma State University.

Dedicated to improving the quality of life of the citizens of Oklahoma through research based information.

Underwriting assistance for our program is provided by the Oklahoma Department of Agriculture, Food, and Forestry, helping to keep Oklahoma green and growing.

- Welcome to "Oklahoma Gardening."

Today, we are offering a bountiful bouquet as we look at what it means to have a perfect flower.

Jim Shrefler reminds us why we may have squash flowers but not be seeing any fruit just yet.

I further explain the simple science of monoecious versus dioecious plants.

And Becky Carroll shares with us the critical pollination stage of pecans (lively music) Almost like an ombre of sunset colors.

It's not the flowers, right?

(lively music) Today we've got another Simple Science segment coming your way.

And a lot of times we're walking through our garden and we're looking for the perfection that is in our garden.

And while as gardeners, a lot of times we see the imperfection.

We see those weeds that need to be pulled and things like that.

We're not talking about the garden as a whole today.

We're talking about the flowers specifically.

Did you know that there are perfect and imperfect flowers?

That's truly what they are called, but before we get into what is a perfect and imperfect flower, we first need to talk about the parts of a flower.

And in order to do that we are going to use a simple lily here.

An Easter Lily is a great way to do that.

Now you can see I've got a stem of lilies here and this one got a little messy on us and I'm gonna explain what this is all about here.

So we've gotta a lily, this is a complete flower.

And this messy stuff is actually the pollen.

Usually when florists get these and they start to open they will pinch these off.

You can see this one doesn't have any because this pollen will stain your clothes.

So, we're gonna first start by looking on the outside of the flower.

And while these all look like petals, these outside ones are actually called sepals.

You can see here on the ones that are still buds.

These sepals are what protect the flower as it's developing.

They initially start out very green but as the flower matures and gets closer to blooming, you can see how they're starting to get a little bit lighter until it's white, but you can see how it still has that kind of green spine to the back of it.

Now, these sepals open up and create a more floral display on the inside, inviting more insects to come inside.

So, we're gonna go ahead and tear this particular flower right here apart so that we can dissect all of these parts of the plant.

So the first thing we're gonna do is take our sepals, and on this particular one we're gonna find that there are three sepals.

So we're gonna go ahead and just pinch those off.

One.

Two.

And three.

So we're gonna lay those right there for us to see.

Now you'll find that we also have three petals on here.

Now it's a little hard to tell on these white ones, but a lot of times the petals will have kind of tracks and markings that are basically creating an invitation for your pollinators to come inside and to highlight where they need to land on their flower.

So this one has sort of some bumpy marks to kind of entice them to come down into the body of this flower here.

So these are the petals, we're gonna now remove those three petals.

Again, it's a little messy because it does have some pollen on there as well.

One, two and three petals.

So next we have what we call the male part of the plant.

And in this case, we have six of those and there are three parts to the male part of the flower.

And I'm gonna go ahead and pull one of these off.

So you've, this whole thing is called the stamen.

And if you think about it, men is in the word stamen, so you know it's the male part of the plant.

That is composed of the filament that holds the anther and inside the anther is the pollen.

And you'll notice that these filaments, they're barely attached to the anther and that allows them to sort of dance in the wind.

Again, if you think a bee comes in here and kind of is nestling around in there, then all of a sudden that pollen's gonna then get on the bee.

So, that's what this is all about.

We've got six of those, I've already pulled one of those off.

So we're gonna take one, two.

- Three, four, and the fifth one here, and our sixth one there.

So you can see these, again, are the stamen, the male part of the plant.

And then finally we have one last part and this is the female part of our flower here.

So you can see there's like a swollen area here and this is the ovary.

Then you have your style, which is actually a tube from your sticky stigma up here.

It's sticky so that the pollen will stick to it.

The pollen travels down this tube into the ovary and that's how you get your seeds and all of your flowers that produce a fruit.

So this basically is the whole female part.

Again, it's all called the pistil but comprised of the ovary, the style, and the stigma.

So we're gonna go ahead and break this off, too so that we've got all four parts that are necessary to have a complete flower.

That's your sepals, your petals, your stamen, and your pistil.

Now, if any one of these four parts is missing off of a flower, sometimes flowers don't have sepals or petals, then they are considered incomplete.

If a plant has all four of 'em, they are complete.

But the two most important parts of any flower are the sexual parts of that, which is the male and the female parts of the plant because that's what, again, produces the seed which is, in essence, what the plant is trying to do.

So if you have a flower that is complete and has all of these, you know that it is also a perfect flower.

It's sort of like that whole thing that a square is a rectangle but not necessarily a rectangle is a square.

There you have it.

You now know what makes a perfect flower for your garden.

(cheerful music) - Plants such as watermelon, pumpkin, and squash are all in a group of plants that we call cucurbits.

It's a family of plants that typically has separate male and female flowers.

And in order for these plants to set fruit and develop fruit, they have to be pollinated by insects, such as honey bees and bumble bees and some other pollinators too.

And that pollination requires that the insects move from, this is a female flower, so the insects need to go into the female flower where they pick up the pollen, from the male flower where they pick up pollen, and then they fly around and they move to a female flower.

And this is one of those here.

The flower is closed, but this is one of the female flowers, and this one has been pollinated, which means that when this flower was still open, one of those insects, probably several, went into that flower and deposited the pollen to enable the pollination to occur.

Many times people don't when you say the male and female flowers, they're a little confused but in all of these, whether it's watermelon or squash or pumpkin, it's pretty easy to distinguish the different flowers.

The male flowers are typically on a long, narrow stalk, not always this long, but on a narrow stalk like this.

Whereas the female flowers, the stalk is shorter that they're on.

And even before the pollination occurs, at the base of the flower, there's a tiny fruit, a very tiny version of the fruit is there and visible.

So that'll help you understand, if your particular crop is setting.

It has both male and female flowers.

Sometimes what happens is you'll have some male flowers and the female flowers are a little slower in developing, so people think, "Well, I've got flowers out there but I'm not getting any fruit."

It may be that your female flowers just have not started to open yet.

So that might just be a little pointer that'll help you when you're growing your cucurbit crops.

(upbeat music) - So we've talked about imperfect and perfect flowers.

Remember perfect flowers have both the male and the female parts in one flower.

Imperfect means that they're missing either the male or female, which means you possibly have two different types of flowers.

Now, how do you know whether you're getting a male plant or a female plant?

Well, before we get to that, it might mean that you have two different types of flowers on one plant.

If you have both male and female flowers on a single plant, that is called monoecious.

Monoecious is Greek for meaning one house.

Mono meaning one.

So you have all of the sex organs in one plant.

Now there are plants, and like I said the lily is like that, but an example of an imperfect flower where you have- - A plant that has two different types of flowers on it would be your traditional corn.

Think about it.

Where are the flowers on the corn plant?

Well, a lot of people might suggest that the flowers are the tassels that are at the top of the corn plant and you would be correct.

Those are actually the male flowers.

If you think about it, the male flowers is up high and so those tassels contain the pollen.

They have the filaments that release the pollen off of those anthers up there.

And the gravity and the wind allow that pollen to fall down to the female flowers that are on the side of the cornstalks.

And if you've ever shucked corn, you know how sticky it can be, messing with all of those silks.

So those silks are actually the sticky stigmas that we mentioned that the pollen has to fall down onto those stigmas and each one of these corn silks leads to a kernel of corn.

So, kind of gives you a little perspective next time you're eating some corn on the cob and you notice one of those kernels isn't actually developed, that's because one of those silks that led to that kernel didn't ever get any pollen in order for that to ripen up.

So, that is an example of a monoecious plant with imperfect flowers.

Now, what about the dioecious plants?

Dioecious means two halves.

So you have a female plant and a male plant but how would you ever know whether it's a female or a male plant?

Well, there's several examples of dioecious plants including our eastern red cedars, ginkgo's, asparagus.

Those are all dioecious plants.

So here I have a couple of eastern red cedars.

If you take a look at this, now we all know eastern red cedars.

They cause a lot of allergy problems and that is because of the pollen from the male plants.

They're actually produced out of cones.

So you can see here, there's a male plant here that has these little brown cones on the end.

They kind of turn orange and they will release that pollen early in the season.

But it is the female plant that produces these berries.

Once the pollen lands on it and they begin to ripen, you get these bluish berries, which might be attractive in a landscape, if you want.

Cedar wax wings actually really enjoy eating these berries, but it's also these berries that then get later spread around and cause the eastern red cedar to develop in some other places.

Now it is a native plant.

So that's the eastern red cedar being dioecious and a lot of your junipers are.

Now here, we have a holly.

Not all holly's are dioecious, but some are including the deciduous holly.

And you can see this is a female because it actually has berries that are being produced on it.

So why does it matter whether your plant is dioecious or not?

Well, let's say you go and you wanna landscape the front of your house with hollies that have berries on them.

If you got male plants, you would have some plants that never have berries on 'em no matter what.

It might be that you walk into the nursery and buy a female plant because it has berries on it.

You get it home and the next year, it never produces any berries.

That's because you might live in an area where there are no male hollies around to actually pollinate those female plants.

So while you might have a female, it won't actually produce any of those berries for you.

Now in most urban areas, you don't really have to worry about that 'cause there's usually plenty of hollies around the vicinity.

However, if you want to make sure that you do have both male and female, if you live out in the country or you wanna make sure that you have berries that are able to produce, then you wanna make sure you have one of both, at least one male.

You don't have to have a one for one ratio.

And the male could be in the backyard and you could have all berries in the front yard, if you wanted to do that.

Well, it might get complicated.

Like do I have to look for the flowers in order to buy the right hollies that I need?

Luckily, the horticulture industry is there to help you out with different cultivar names that will kind of guide you as to what you might be buying, such as blue prince and blue princess, China boy or China girl.

And in some cases they've actually put the male and the female in the same pot and they call that China twins.

So there you have it.

It's sometimes made easy.

If you look at the name, it often is a clue as to whether it might be a female or a male plant.

Now you might think I should always want fruit, right?

I always want the female plant but that might not always be the case.

Take for instance, our Kentucky coffee tree.

It's a native tree.

It's a beautiful tree that has an open airy canopy and produces these large, almost up to 12 inch long bean pods.

Now some people like those because of the ornamentation that they provide on the tree.

However, if you have to be in an area where you wanna make sure you're mowing under it, having to mow over and around hundreds of 10 inch long seed pods can be a little damaging to your mower.

So in that instance, if you have a dioecious tree like a Kentucky coffee tree, you might wanna make sure that you're getting the male cultivar instead of the female.

Again, the female would have the fruits, the males would not.

So if you don't wanna contend with the mess of a female Kentucky coffee tree, you might look for a cultivar called espresso which is a male cultivar of that type of tree.

Now another tree that you wanna avoid getting the female is on is the ginkgo.

Ginkgo's are notorious, female ginkgo's I should say, are notorious for having vomit-like smelling fruit.

- So probably something that you don't really want in your front yard, but ginkgos have a unique, distinctive look as they have a fan-shaped leaf and they're a very attractive tree.

So you might wanna go with the male cultivar instead of the female when it comes to the ginkgo tree.

So there you have it, reasons why you might wanna be aware of whether that plant you're adding to your landscape is monoecious or dioecious.

(bright country music) Today, we are back out here at the Cimarron Valley Research Station and we are standing in the pecan orchard.

And some might say we're standing in a field of flowers, but Becky, I don't see any flowers, can you help me out here?

- There's flowers everywhere.

If you take a look into these trees, if we'll pull down this branch right here, all these things that are hanging down these are called catkins, they're the male flowers.

- [Host] Okay.

- [Becky] And then the female flowers are a little bit harder to see, but they're at the end of the current season's growth that's the female flower or the pistillate flower.

- [Host] So that kind of bright, limey, green color?

- [Becky] Yup, there's just little stigmas that are exposed right there.

And just recently, since, probably Monday, these started to be visible where you could see them.

- [Host] Oh, okay.

So all the male pollen has to find its way onto that female pollen in order to get our pecans each season, correct?

- [Becky] Yes.

And so we wanna have our pollen source within about 150 yards of the tree that we are wanting to be pollinated.

- [Host] Okay.

- So if you're planting trees, you need to make sure that they're planted close enough unless you're around native trees where they might have a pollen source that might come in, but still about 150 yards is ideal.

- Okay, well, I know people that just maybe have one pecan tree in their backyard and if it's got the male and the female, why does that not work?

Why do we need something different?

- Pecans are kind of different.

They're a monoecious plant.

So they have male and female flowers on the same tree.

So monoecious means, I think, same house or something like that.

And so we have both the male and female flowers, but they are a little bit different than things like peach or apple, where we have a complete flower.

These are separate flowers.

And the thing about pecans is that they have dichogamous flowering where the male flowers and the female flowers they are not sexually mature at the same time.

So the female flowers may be receptive before the male flowers which that would be a protogynous type of flower.

And so I always think of protogynous who has gyn in the middle so Gynny.

The female flowers are receptive first.

And then if the male flowers are sending out pollen before the females are receptive, those are called protandrous.

And so I think of Andy or Andrew in the middle.

And so the male flowers are sending out pollen before the females are ready to be pollinated.

- [Host] Okay, so you want one of both, if you've got pecans so that they can make sure that you've got pollen when the females are ready and vice versa.

- [Becky] Yes, you wanna have an early pollen shed and a late pollen shed.

Sometimes they're called type one and type two.

- [Host] Okay.

- Sometimes protandrous and protogynous.

So it's kind of a mouthful there, but you need one of each.

And to get a good fruit set.

- So is this more important on cultivars?

Because I know cultivars are genetically all the same, right?

If you get one particular cultivar, the next one over is exactly the same.

- That's right.

So when we're laying out an orchard in a commercial setting, we wanna have about every fourth row as a pollinator.

And so we want to make sure that we're setting that up properly during the planting time.

And then also think about way down the road when we're thinning the orchard, that we're not gonna be removing all the pollinators in year 20 or so.

So you have to set it up properly.

- Yeah, 'cause initially an orchard is over planted, right?

But then as those trees grow, you have to go out and thin out some of your trees.

- In a native grove each native tree is genetically different.

So you're gonna have good pollination with those trees.

They're gonna be protandrous and protogynous out in that same area.

- All right, so that's one of the benefits of having a native tree over a cultivar.

- Sure.

- Okay.

well, you've thrown a lot of fancy words at this during this segment.

- I know.

- But it is interesting to know, and of course, the female flowers are out on the end and so.

You can see, we have these shucks here.

So that's where we're gonna find our pecans later in the season also.

- Right.

And whenever we start getting... Pecans are one of the last thing to start butting out in the spring.

You can always tell pecan orchard or you're driving down the road and you see a native grove, because they're very late to start breaking bud.

But whenever they start breaking or opening up those buds, the catkins will be developing on that last year's wood.

And so we'll have catkin development and the shoot development on last year's wood which is right here.

And so you can see they're all coming directly off of that last year's growth.

- [Host] It's got kind of that grayer bark too, right?

- [Becky] And that current season's growth is going to be, it'll have primary buds.

We can't see them right now, but when this gets to be mature, we'll be able to see primary buds.

And then the female flowers, they are born on the current season's growth.

So we'll have this new shoot development.

- And this is where the female flowers are developed.

So the catkins are directly on last year's growth, and the female flowers are on this year's growth.

So a little bit different.

And these are usually not visible until early May, but you can pull your limbs down and see if there's a potential crop even early before they're pollinated.

Now, even if you see flowers, that doesn't mean we'll have pecans in the fall.

'Cause a lot of things can happen between now and October or November when we're harvesting.

But you can also check to see if they're your pollen source is active just by shaking some of these tassels and seeing some of that yellow pollen being released.

Or looking at your flowers and they'll get kind of a sticky substance on there.

And that's just signaling that they are ready to be pollinated.

- And they are wind pollinated- - They are wind pollinated, yes.

Insects are not involved in the pollination.

And so if we have a tree that doesn't have a pollen source it's just out there by itself, it may have flowers but it doesn't get pollinated or it may be self pollinated.

There are some that will actually pollinate themselves but they'll lose maybe three quarters of that crop and the quality is not as good.

So we would rather have cross pollination if possible.

Some trees won't pollinate themselves at all, but others may have a slight window where they can pollinate each other.

- [Casey] So unless you have native, you definitely wanna get more than one different types.

- And if these don't pollinate properly, we'll have a lot of pecans dropping on the ground in June.

And so we watch for June drop and that's usually there was some problem with our pollination at that time.

So they didn't get fertilized and they drop to the ground.

- Well, thanks for sharing this information with us, Becky.

And definitely we are in a field of flowers and I know why my eyes - Definitely.

- are starting to water now.

Thank you, Becky.

- Sure.

(Becky laughs) (upbeat music) - [Narrator] There are a lot of great horticulture activities this time of year.

Be sure and consider some of these events in the weeks ahead.

(upbeat music) Next week, we've got another great "Oklahoma Gardening" show as we cover everything from butterflies to birds.

(upbeat music) (gentle music) - It's close.

(indistinct) - You can't eat these flowers.

- [Narrator] To find out more information about show topics as well as recipes, videos, articles fact sheets and other resources, including a directory of local extension offices, be sure to visit our website at Oklahomagardening.okstate.edu.

Join in on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

You can find this entire show and other recent shows as well as individual segments on our Oklahoma Gardening YouTube channel.

Tune into our OKGardeningClassics YouTube channel to watch segments from previous hosts.

Oklahoma gardening is produced by the Oklahoma Cooperative Extension Service as part of the Division of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources at Oklahoma State University.

The Botanic Garden at OSU is home to our studio gardens and we encourage you to come visit this beautiful still-water gem.

We would like to thank our generous underwriter, the Oklahoma Department of Agriculture, Food, and Forestry.

Additional support is also provided by Pond Pro Shop, Greenleaf Nursery, and the Garden Debut Plants, the Tulsa Garden Center at Woodward Park, the Oklahoma Horticultural Society, Smart Pot and the Tulsa Garden Club.

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