Flowering plant magnoliid (2%) clades. The remaining 5 clades contain a little over 250 species in total; i.e. less than 0.1% of flowering plant diversity, divided among 9 families. The 43 most-diverse of 443 families of flowering plants by species, in their APG circumscriptions, are Of these, the Orchidaceae, Poaceae, Cyperaceae, Araceae, Bromeliaceae, Arecaceae, and Iridaceae are monocot families; Piperaceae, Lauraceae, and Annonaceae are magnoliid dicots; the rest of the families are eudicots. Double fertilization refers to a process in which two sperm cells fertilize cells in the ovule. This process begins when a pollen grain adheres to the stigma of the
Flowering plant in exceptional cases. The characteristic feature of angiosperms is the flower. Flowers show remarkable variation in form and elaboration, and provide the most trustworthy external characteristics for establishing relationships among angiosperm species. The function of the flower is to ensure fertilization of the ovule and development of fruit containing seeds. The floral apparatus may arise terminally on a shoot or from the axil of a leaf (where the petiole attaches to the stem). Occasionally, as in violets, a flower arises singly in the axil of an ordinary foliage-leaf. More typically, the flower-bearing portion of the plant is sharply distinguished from