Asexual and sexual reproduction compared

From EvoWiki

Most multicellular organisms (plants, fungi, and animals) can reproduce sexually. Organisms that do not reshuffle their genes, i.e., reproduce asexually, are at a competitive disadvantage. Over sufficiently long periods of time competitors out evolve organisms that reproduce only asexually. However, asexually reproducing organisms do have one advantage over their sexually reproducing competitors, in that an asexually reproductive individual can immediately establish a population when it encounters favorable conditions. Some plants and animals are capable of reproducing asexually and sexually.

Flowering plants

Flowering plants produce seeds through sexual reproduction. Since the genes in a seed have been reshuffled there is no guarantee that any seedling will grow well in the same growing conditions as the parent. There is no guarantee that any given seedling will grow successfully anywhere. Therefore flowering plants produce large numbers of seeds and disperse them. That way there is a reasonable chance that at least a few seeds will by chance come to grow in places where growing conditions suit their particular combination of genes. Different flowering plants have evolved different dispersal mechanisms. This is an example of Evolutionary convergence.

Some flowering plants also reproduce asexually. The young plant produced that way has identical genes to the parent. Growing conditions that suit the parent suit the young plant. Therefore asexually reproduced plants always grow near the parent in nature. The only exception the author knows is when gardeners and agriculturalists reproduce a clone of a plant and choose to grow parts of the clone in different places.