 This video is about floral formulas. Yes, we do have formulas for flowers which are nothing but shorthand notations used by botanists. They use it to represent the essential informations about the number and arrangement of various floral parts. Well, since we already have videos on them, we will not go into the depth of all these different terminologies. So if you have not watched those videos, then it would be a good idea to go back and watch them first and then come back to this video. But if you have watched them already, great! Let's go ahead. Now like any other formula, floral formulas will also have symbols and numerical representations in them. Let me show you a floral formula. Here it is and this formula is for this particular flower that you see on your screen. It is called Solonam nigram but don't bother much about what its name is. We will try to understand what these different symbols actually signifies. We will start with the very basic ones, the one which we already know, the one that tells you about the sexuality of the flower. This symbol means male flower, this means a female flower and this symbol means that it is a bisexual flower. And if you look at the floral formula, you see this flower is bisexual, right? Next we have K, K for calyx and calyx is nothing but sepals, number of sepals. And here we can see K is five. That means this flower has five sepals. But why is five placed under brackets? Well, when anything is placed under brackets, it simply means those parts are fused. There is cohesion between the sepals present in the flower. So let me write here, if there is bracket anywhere, you need to know that it means cohesion or the parts are attached to each other, okay? Then next we have C, C means corolla. Corolla is nothing again but petals. So this flower has five petals, right? One, two, three, four, five. And again, it is placed under brackets, which means they are all attached to each other. Now next we have P for perian. Now we don't have that in our floral formula here, but it is something very important that we need to know, okay? So perian simply means the fusion of sepals and petals. We have learned that already in our previous videos, right? And we call them tepals. Now in a floral formula, periant will be present like this. P with, say, a certain number, let's say three. This is how it will be represented, okay? Now next to periant, we have androsium, the male part of a flower, the stem end. And here we have five stem ends in this flower, right? And those are not fused, okay? Next to androsium, we have G for gynotium, the ovaries, the female part, the style. In this flower, we have two female part and both of them are fused. As you can see, it's placed under the brackets. Now we have almost covered all the parts that are mentioned in the floral formula, except for this plus symbol in the beginning and this arc that we see that is joining C and A. Now let's understand what these two symbols mean. So the plus or percentage symbol actually refers to the symmetry of the flower. We have read about ectenomorphic and zygomorphic flower in our previous videos, right? So ectenomorphic, which means radial symmetry is denoted by a plus symbol. And zygomorphic or bilateral symmetry of a flower is represented by a percentage symbol, okay? So this is how symmetry of the flower is represented. And this flower is ectenomorphic, that means it is radially symmetrical. Now coming back to this arc that is joining C and A, it simply means that the corolla and androsium in this flower is fused. So if we see a line that is joining two different parts or two different walls of a flower, it simply means that those two parts are fused, okay? And this again reminds me of a very important point about gynotium. Now ovaries or the female parts can be of several types, right? We can have superior ovary and inferior ovary as we have already discussed in our previous videos, right? Now every time a flower has superior ovary, then in the floral formula, they will have a dash underneath it. This whole thing represents superior ovary and if the flower has an inferior ovary, then the dash will be above it. This is how it will be represented in the floral formula, okay? Well, it is not mentioned in this formula, but very often you will get to see this dash above and below G, which simply means superior and inferior ovary, okay? Now apart from this, we also get to see bract mentioned in the floral formula. Now if you're wondering that, hey, this looks like a leaf, why are we calling it a bract? Well, we have discussed what bract is in our previous videos, okay? But just to give you an idea, it is not a leaf, it is something which is present above the leaf and below the sepals. And this bract is represented by the simple Br, which simply means bractiate, a flower in which bract is present and EBR means e-bractiate or the absence of bract. So with this, we have covered all major symbols required to write a floral formula. I hope this formula now makes sense to you.