The ancient angiosperm flower was bisexual and radially symmetrical, this is how a new work defines the first flowers that populated the Earth thanks to the largest collection of modern flower traits, through which their common ancestor has been concluded .
The first flower
The study , published in the journal Nature Communications and led by Hervé Sauquet of the University of Paris-Sur (France), presents this week the appearance of the unique ancestor of all flowering plants that, according to previous studies, existed for more than 140 million years.
He describes the ancient flower as a plant with male (stamens) and female (carpels) flower organs, as well as multiple spirals of petals arranged in groups of three.
We reconstruct the ancestor of the angiosperm flower as bisexual and radially symmetrical, with more than two whorls with three separate perianth organs each, more than two whorls of three stamens, and more than five separate spiral carpels (…) The study not only shows a clearer portrait of the ancestral flower, but also indicates that most of the existing plants are the result of the simplification of that ancient model during the first 20 million years of floral evolution.