petals underwater, then rapidly moves to the surface. The male flower makes its journey to the surface even more quickly and on its way breaks its stem, at the surface it unfurls its petals and using the stamens as sails, heads towards the anchored female and they collide so violently that the pollen is knocked out of its anthers. Once the female flower has reached fertilisation, it closes, and its stem tightens into a corkscrew, recoiling back under the surface and there safely under water it develops its seed.Most of the worlds surface is covered by seawater and most of it is beyond the reach of flowering plants. The only plants that can prosper here are floating single-celled algae, the simplest of all plants. They have all of the four fundamental needs in abundance. The water never drops more than a degree or so in temperature, there is always available sunlight and they are never in short supply of nourishment as rich flow of nutrients float up from the seabed. They are the basis of all life in the sea and perhaps the least considered by humanity, tiny creatures of the sea consume them. Among these consumers are corals and crustaceans, molluscs and fish (plankton), which in turn feed the rest of the seabed. And more importantly we land animals depend on them, for they are the main factor in maintaining the balance of gases in earths atmosphere and they produce the majority of the oxygen we breath.Plants have colonised almost the earths entire surface; in fact only about 6% of the earth has no vegetation cover. They exist in the most extreme temperatures and survive and evolve in the strangest of environments. Yet they have one adversary, man who poses a greater threat than any other living thing. In a relatively short period of time man has plundered the earth, leaving about 10% of the flowering plants close to extinction. We must begin to realise that this action threatens our fragile ecosystem that we ultimately depe...
