The Journey To Spread Pollen (BioE80 Spr2015)
May 27, 2015 • 11:34 AM UTC
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mhpark
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Being tasked with exploring the micro-world around us, my partner and I set out to answer the question: how do flowers spread pollen? While this is not a new inquiry, we wanted to see for ourselves what our textbooks had only abstracted to us. As a result, we found two different anther samples and proceeded to explore with our newly assembled foldscope. Eventually, we began to notice that our two samples were wildly different both aesthetically and functionally, yet they had both evolved effective solutions to the same problem: reproduction.
The first sample came from a white flower with long, slender filaments and small, bulbous, yellow anthers. Upon closer inspection, we found a plethora of tiny, bead-like structures coating the bulb, which were the pollen grains. We hypothesized that for this flower, it would be effective to transfer pollen by sheer number. Therefore, any insect or bee that got close enough would be instantaneously coated.
The second sample came from a purple flower that had long, thick filaments, with no bulbous anthers. As you can see from the image, instead of coating the stamen with lots of pollen grains, this flower uses micro-tendrils to hook onto nearby replication vehicles to transfer pollen. By having these spikes, the flower is better able to latch onto the substrate, which allows for a higher pollen transfer rate. In the end, it was amazing to witness this diversity on a micro scale and to see two elegant solutions to a single impending problem.
Contributers: Matthew Park, Akshay Rajagopal
Contributers: Matthew Park, Akshay Rajagopal
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