Gonochorism

In biology, gonochorism (Greek offspring + disperse) or unisexualism or gonochory describes the state of having just one of at least two distinct sexes in any one individual organism. The term is most often used with animals, in which the individual organisms are often gonochorous. Gonochory is less common in plants. For example, in flowering plants, individual flowers may be hermaphrodite (i.e., bisexual, with both stamens and ovaries) or gonochorous (unisexual), having either no stamens (i.e. no male parts) or no ovaries (i.e. no female parts). Among flowering plant species that have unisexual flowers, some also produce hermaphrodite flowers, and the three types occur in different arrangements on separate plants; the plants can be monoecious, dioecious, polygamomonoecious, polygamodioecious, andromonoecious, or gynomonoecious.