At 1:29pm today (May 8, 2019), I picked a purple flower from one of the purple flower plants outside of the Becthel Residence (1280 E. Del Mar Blvd, Pasadena, CA). As shown in the picture above, the plant had a central structure with long stems and individual purple flowers. I tried to collect pollen from it (and a couple other flowers from different types of plants), but I couldn’t collect any. So, I decided to examine the anther, since that is the part of the stamen that produces the pollen.

To get the anther, I peeled off the petals and took one of the stamen. From there, I picked the anther off the filament and mounted it onto my slide.

The above shows what the anther looks like to the naked eye (although I did zoom in a little so that we can see the white fuzzy things around the outside of the anther). The short white stalk at the bottom is part of the filament that I couldn’t pick off. I am showing this picture because when I looked through my foldscope, since the rest of the anther is a dark purple, it appeared black. See below.

As seen above, the main part of the anther (lower part of my picture) looks black. However, the white spikes are clearly visible. So, this image shows the anther, but the only parts that are really visible are the white parts surrounding the anther (as seen in Figure 2).

I looked up different types of purple flowers, but couldn’t seem to find the specific species. So, my question for myself is what are the white parts of the anther? What purpose do they serve?

If I knew the family or genus of the flower, I might be able to research more into how those types of flowers’ stamen work. Without that knowledge, I think that the white part might be where the pollen goes once it is made. Given that the flowers are fairly long and not very open (see Figure 1), the plant probably relies on insect pollination. So, it would make sense, especially given the shape of the white parts, that the pollen would congregate on a part of the anther for the insect to get.

It also would be nice to try to examine the anther with a better microscope. Since the general magnification of the foldscope is limited, it would be interesting to examine the purple part of the anther under a microscope that will show the anther (instead of just looking black or having it take up the entire “screen” like on a foldscope).

#caltechbi1