“What is Pollen?” January 30, 2009
Posted by askpari in Covered with Knobs, Covered with Spines, Different Shape, Making Seeds, New Plants, Pollen, Sticky Surface, Threadlike Tube, Tiny Egg Cell, Tiny Specks, Tiny Yellow Grains.Tags: Anthers, Cells, Eggs, Grains, Microscope, Plants, Specks, Stigma, Tube
add a comment
The tiny yellow grains that are found in flowers are pollen. The flowers use it in making the seeds that will grow into new plants. Plants make the pollen in the saclike anthers of their flowers. Pollen grains are so small that they look like tiny specks.
If you look through a microscope, you can see that pollen has different shapes in different kinds of plants. Some pollen grains are smooth and other kinds of pollen are covered with knobs and spines. Before a seed can form, a flower must be pollinated. This means that a pollen grain must fall on another part of the flower called stigma.
When a pollen grain of the same kind of flower catches on the sticky surface of the stigma, the pollen grains sends out a tiny threadlike tube. The tube grows down to tiny egg cell inside the seed case. Now the eggs are fertilized and will become a seed.
Photo courtesy: americanqualitytemp
