This answer gets rather technical. To simplify the answer, only
flowering plants will be considered. Flowering plants are the majority
of living plant species.

Technically, what most people call individual plants are sexless
sporophytes. Plants have an alternation of generations with a
sporophyte alternating with a gametophyte in the life cycle. Phyte
means plant. Gametophytes produce the sperm and eggs, which are
gametes. Sporophytes are sexless and produce spores. The sporophytes
are the dominant organisms that most people call plants. The male
gametophytes are pollen grains produced in the stamens. The female
gametophyte consists of a usually eight-celled embryo sac in the
carpel or pistil of the flower. The gametophytes are dependent on the
sporophyte.

Most plant species can produce both male and female gametophytes on
the same sporophyte. Only about 4% of flowering plant species produce
separate "male" and "female" sporophytes. The quotes around male and
female are used because the sporophyte is technically sexless but
occasionally produces only staminate or only carpellate flowers. These
are termed dioecious species. Examples include holly, asparagus,
persimmon, pussy willow, kiwi, pistachio, hops, bittersweet, date palm
and fig. Note that an individual plant is not dioecious, just the
species is dioecious. An individual plant of a dioecious species is
either "male" or "female." The preferred term for a "male" sporophyte
is a staminate plant. The preferred term for a "female" sporophyte is
a carpellate plant or pistillate plant.

Animals and plants do not have a recent common ancestor. Their common
ancestor would probably have been a single-celled organism.

There are some major differences between plant and animal sexual
reproduction but also a lot of similarities. In plants, gametophytes
have sex organs and sporophytes do not. Pollen grains contain sperm,
which functions like animal sperm. A plant sperm fertilizes the egg in
the embryo sac of the flower. Terms such as fertilization, zygote and
embryo are applied to both plants and animals and have the same
meaning in both. Plant pollination is roughly equivalent to copulation
or sexual intercourse in animals. Some animal sex terms do not apply
to plants such as fetus.


David R. Hershey


"Elaine Jackson" wrote in message news:5Fj9d.658765$gE.514467@pd7tw3no...
Animal species have male and female specimens, and so do plants. Do plants and
animals have a common ancestor that already had specimens of male and female
gender? Does sexual terminology mean something completely different when applied
to plants as opposed to animals? TIA

Peace