Ted,
I think he means in an ideal world he'd like to parent to the anchor point of the flower to the anchor point of the stem. Lets assume that means moving the anchor point to the top of the stem.
As it stands now, the anchor point is at the bottom of the stem which makes the above possibility not a great option. He's probably animating it to grow up/out from the source point like the flower is growing.
I do like your idea to precomp, because you're basically able to set a different anchor point for the precomp while leaving the stem's alone.
That might, indeed, be the solution.
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Angelo Lorenzo
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