To many who celebrated the chaste beauty of floral displays, the 1694 revelation of Rudolph Camerarius, in "Epistolae de Sexu Plantarum", came as a shock. He identified stamens and pistils as male and female organs, and the pollen as a fertilizing agent, which prompted Johann Georg Siegesbeck to decry "What man will ever believe that God Almighty should have introduced such confusion, or rather such shameful whoredom, for the propagation of the reign of plants? Who will instruct young students in such a voluptuous system without scandal?" Discoveries of Amici and Hofmeister of a tubular structure that penetrated the ovule did little to allay these fears. Modern research however provides a very favorable comparison of sexuality in plants and animals. Based on current findings, plant sexual reproduction is a far more subtle, conservative, successful and elegant system than that found in all other biological systems. Reproductive evolution in flowering plants having far exceeded that in animals, it is only in gatherings of botanists that we can truly reveal their inherently superior achievements.

Key words: double fertilization, fertilization mechanisms, plant gametes