flowering plant

The iris is a plant of northern temperate regions. Most have flattened leaves with large and showy flowers with an equal number of upright and pendulous petals, called standards and falls.

Term generally used for angiosperms, which bear flowers with various parts, including sepals, petals, stamens, and carpels.

Sometimes the term is used more broadly, to include both angiosperms and gymnosperms, in which case the cones of conifers and cycads are referred to as ‘flowers’. Usually, however, the angiosperms and gymnosperms are referred to collectively as seed plants, or spermatophytes.

The earliest flowering plant identified so far has been dated as being between 125 and 142 million years old, by Chinese palaeontologists, in 1998. The fossil Archefructus was found in northeast China. In 1996 UK palaeontologists found fossils in southern England of Bevhalstia pebja, a wetland herb about 25 cm/10 in high, which has been dated as early Cretaceous, about 130 million years old.