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After completing the CAPTCHA below, you will immediately regain access to the site again. This article may be too technical for most readers to understand. Please help improve it to make it understandable to non-experts, without removing the technical details. Diagram showing the parts of a mature flower.

Tetramerous flower of Ludwigia octovalvis showing petals and sepals. In many Fabaceae flowers, a calyx tube surrounds the petals. The large calyx of the medlar fruit is the source of its vulgar nicknames. After flowering, most plants have no more use for the calyx which withers or becomes vestigial.

Some plants retain a thorny calyx, either dried or live, as protection for the fruit or seeds. Morphologically, both sepals and petals are modified leaves. The term tepal is usually applied when the parts of the perianth are difficult to distinguish, e. The number of sepals in a flower is its merosity.