Anthers and Stigmas and Styles, Oh My!

The fertilization process in flowering plant species, aka angiosperm, like brassica oleracea, is a fascinating process. To understand this process even more, we dissected a brassica oleracea flower. This is what we found.

In order to create the flower, the plant has sepals, which protects the flower as it develops. When the flower blooms, the petals help attract pollinators to the flower. Inside of the petals, there is the stamen, which is made up of the anther and a filament. Here is an image of the inside of a brassica oleracea flower:

Inside of the flower: Anther and Filament, along with the petals in the back and foreground

The filament supports the anther. The anther is where meiosis takes place, which is how the pollen grains are produced. Here is a picture of the anthers surrounding the stigma:  

The Stigma is in the center and it's surrounded by anthers

The innermost part is the carpel (pistil) which creates female gametophytes.

At the bottom of each carpel, is the base, which is called the ovary. The ovary has one or more ovule where the female gametophytes are made. Here is an image of the stigma cut in half, lengthwise, which exposes the ovaries:

Here are the ovaries inside of the stigma. The stigma was cut in half, lengthwise, in order to expose the ovaries.
The ovaries are reproductive organs that create more flowers/offspring.

The carpal narrows into a stalk which is called the style and at the top of it is a sticky portion called the stigma, which is where other pollen grains land, which fertilizes the flower. Here is a picture of the stigma:

This is the stigma. It collects pollen.

Normally, flowers create both both female and male gametophytes, but sometimes other plants have separate male and female flowers. A tassel is a flower which has male gametophytes and the silk is the style of the flower that has female gametophytes.