This is a pollen sample of from a shrub found on the Caltech campus in Pasadena, California in Ruddock House. The sample was taken on May 10th at 3:33 pm.

The sample was obtained by slightly grazing the pollen on the protruding anthers and then placed onto a microscope slide. A cover sheet was placed over the sample and taped down to seal the sample. The pollen was on the medium side and was about 1 mm in size, and was bright orange-yellow.

As we can see, this pollen sample is round and spikey in nature. Due to the nature of the sample, these pollen are quite large and are concentrated next to each other. I am wondering whether these are the only types of pollen that this flowering tree produces, as the entire sample seems to be of the same pollen variety. To determine whether there are more types of pollen in this flower, it would be prudent to find multiple flowers of the same species and collect samples from each of them to compare the sizes and types of pollen that this species of flower has.
This tree was not too densely populated with these flowers, so it seems like this plant species may bloom more during the summer compared to the spring.


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