How is pollen so mobile? (BioE80 Spr2015)

Applause IconMay 26, 2015 • 12:22 PM UTC
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preethiragh

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Pollen – it falls in large clumps as we bike through campus, plagues us with allergies and constant runny noses, and gets entangled in our hair and clothes throughout the day. The question I sought to understand was how does this pollen manage to spread so widely throughout an area? When we were searching the area for interesting looking objects to observe, we came across a row of bushes with slightly strange looking flowers. Instead of being the usual small clump of pollen surrounded by more prominent petals, it was simply short stalks of pollen dominating the plant. We gently shook some of the pollen onto the sticky film of our slide and mounted it in our foldscope. As we examined it under the lens we saw that what seemed just like one small clump of pollen were actually minuscule stalks with multiple branches protruding from it. Each stalk was almost always entangled with another stalk, the branches interwoven between each other. Perhaps it is this interwoven nest that helps pollen adhere to any surface and travel in clumps. One could study and map out these structures, observing and testing the strength of the adherence. This could possibly lead to the creation of secure, lightweight, and portable adhesives or the invention of a leak-proof, tightly interwoven, light fabric.
Contributors: Preethi Raghavan

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