Pollen – Did You Know…

Image result for image pollen

… That pollen never deteriorates? It’s one of the few natural substances that lasts indefinitely.

Pollen is a fine to coarse powdery substance comprising pollen grains which are male microgametophytes of seed plants, which produce male gametes (sperm cells). Pollen grains have a hard coat made of sporopollenin that protects the gametophytes during the process of their movement from the stamens to the pistil of flowering plants or from the male cone to the female cone of coniferous plants.

If pollen lands on a compatible pistil or female cone, it germinates, producing a pollen tube that transfers the sperm to the ovule containing the female gametophyte. Individual pollen grains are small enough to require magnification to see detail. The study of pollen is called palynology and is highly useful in paleoecology, paleontology, archaeology, and forensics.

Pollen in plants is used for transferring haploid male genetic material from the anther of a single flower to the stigma of another in cross-pollination. In a case of self-pollination, this process takes place from the anther of a flower to the stigma of the same flower.

I’m a hay fever sufferer and I have to say that only looking at the picture above and now writing, reading and just thinking about pollen makes me sneeze and feel itchy…

10 thoughts on “Pollen – Did You Know…

  1. If I remember my physics right (Jr. High was a long time ago), nothing is either created or lost… it merely changes form. — The law of conservation if I recollect correctly. 🙂

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