Primitive and Advanced—a Couple of Primitive Botanical Terms

If a flower has regular floral parts and lots of them (especially stamens and pistils) botanists call it “primitive”. If it has irregularly shaped petals—or if some floral parts are missing—and few stamens and pistils, they call it “advanced”. As far as I’m concerned, that terminology is primitive. It is evolutionary jargon. Since botanists tend to be confused about the supposed evolution of the flowering plants, they ought not throw around those words, trying to snow themselves and the rest of us with evolutionary “just-so” stories.

So enjoy staring at the photos of a few “primitive”, “advanced” and really advanced flowers and flower heads—and see if you can still dare call any of these highly complex, intelligently designed beauties “primitive”.

Here the flowers appear in roughly reverse order, from "really advanced" in the case of the fleabane, to primitive in the case of the multiflora rose and buttercup. The fleabane is actually a composite flower head, with dozens of ray flowers and disc flowers. The birdfoot trefoil has the typical irregular legume form.

All were photographed at the Celery Farm Natural Area at the end of May. Click on the photos to see the flowers WAY bigger than life.