Flowers appeared on Earth 50 million before dinosaurs
For a long time it was believed that angiosperms (that is, flowering) plants appeared about 150 million years ago, much later than gymnosperms - ferns, horsetails, mosses. But a recent scientific discovery by Australian scientist Byron Lamon shows that we are off by about 100 million years. The molecular clock method showed that the first flowering plants appeared 50 million before the dinosaurs.
From 1 millimeter to 1 meter
Flowers are very diverse in size: the smallest flower from the duckweed family is no more than 1 millimeter in diameter. And Rafflesia Arnold, the largest flower in the world, reaches a diameter of 105-110 centimeters. Rafflesia lives in the tropics of Oceania, in particular on the island of Sumatra, and blooms for only a week. This is fortunate, because the flower exudes a sickening smell of raw meat. The weight of a rafflesia flower is about 10-11 kg.
Flower petals have spots that only insects can see.
Interestingly, the bees never make a mistake in choosing a flower: they sit only on those that have nectar. Entomologists have found that this happens because flower petals have invisible lines and spots that are visible only in ultraviolet light. By these luminous patterns, insects are guided by colors.
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