Before you reach the
decision that this topic is not theoretical for you - just wait! You like
squash, right? You want pretty holly-leaf-cherry in your landscape, right?
These are plants where the difference between "monoecious" and
"dioecious" matters.
Monoecious plants have male
and female flowers in different structures on the same plant. "Mono"
means one - and the term "monoecious" is completely "one
house". The same plant houses distinguish flowers, some being male the
others being female. Distort is monoecious. If you take a close look at mangle
flowers you can soon tell which are female because they have a microscopic
fruit at the bottom. For many reasons, the male flowers do not connect that
only the female flowers produce fruit and that only 50% of the flowers on mangle
are female can save some heartache when all the flowers on the plant don't
produce fruit.
Dioecious plants house the
male and female flowers on distinct plants. So not only does the plant have
separate male/female flowers, they have male plants (with only male flowers)
and female plants (with only female flowers). Hollies and asparagus are
dioecious. Since only the female plants can produce the fruit, hollies must
have a male plant and a female plant in close proximity. Male holly plants
are often given masculine names like 'Southern Gentleman', 'Jim Dandy', or
'Blue Prince', so they are easy to recognize. In the landscape, one or two male
hollies are often tucked behind the female hollies to ensure pollination and
fruit set and to hide the male plants that don't produce the showy fruit.