Flowering plant - Produce a substance that attracts insects (let them eat some) meanwhile also have pollen nearby that they can’t help getting on them selves and let them carry it to other plants.
A- Good overall plan
Fruit - put the seed in a eatable substance that animals will eat. The seed will be indigestible in the animal. When the animal defecates and buries the excrement the seed will be in fertilized ground.
A+ Well thought through
Potato - Produce basically uneatable lumps on the root when the plant dies these lumps will sprout many ‘baby’ plants in close proximity that will have to compete with each other in the same depleted soil.
This reminds me of the stance my boss takes on evolution; he thinks that some things are so unfit to survive that evolution cannot possibly be the answer to why they look as they do (he frequently talks about giraffes this way), but if giraffes were unfit to survive, then we wouldn’t have any giraffes.
The evolutionary ‘choice’ that potatoes made will have been the result of it being a good one for their particular niche (or we wouldn’t have any potatoes - there are hundreds of species of potato in the wild).
Potato: Produce starchy lumps on roots that will be of interest to humans and thus ensure that the species is transported to (and nurtured in) every continent.
Mangetout of course potatoes work. Just on the surface it seems like the less then idea way to do it. Also this reminds me about a case study I did for an MBA where someone did a thesis on how he was going to set up a company that would deliver packages anywhere in the US overnight. The professor flunked him stating it was impossible - IIRC he started Fedex.
Potato = grows a starchy node which can regenerate the entire plant from scratch if something chews it down to the ground. Also grows side-nodes which can grow new plants if something digs up the main node. Nearly impossible to totally eradicate.
Other flowering plant=totally screwed if it gets chewed down to the root, so it better get those seeds out and distributed fast!
Potato-forming isn’t so much a reproductive strategy as a survival strategy. It’s got a totally different system for scattering seeds.