A flower that possesses all four basic floral parts: sepals, petals, stamens, and pistils. This represents the most structurally complete type of flower with all major components present.
From Latin 'completus' meaning filled up or finished, used in botany since the 18th century to describe flowers with all four fundamental whorls of floral organs. The term emphasizes structural completeness rather than reproductive capability.
A complete flower is like a fully-loaded car with all the options - it has the protective sepals, the showy petals, the male stamens, and the female pistils, even though some flowers get by just fine with fewer parts!
Botanists use 'complete' for flowers with all four whorls (sepals, petals, stamens, carpels), but the language echoes reproductive 'completeness' hierarchies from 19th-century biology that undervalued structural variation.
Use 'four-whorled flower' or 'flower with sepals, petals, stamens, and carpels' to describe structure precisely without normativity.
["four-whorled flower","flower with all four floral whorls","flower with sepals, petals, stamens, and carpels"]
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