How does pollination work?
Learn more about how plants reproduce through pollination.
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Transcript
[MUSIC PLAYING] MELISSA PETRUZZELLO: Pollination is the transfer of pollen which contains sperm from the male part of the plant to the female part of the plant which has the eggs. So it's basically plant sex. We normally think of pollination with flowering plants, but gymnosperms, which have cones instead of flowers and are things like pines and cycads, they also use this pollen transfer for their baby making.
There are many types of pollination that are fascinating and beautiful, but the most common generally are wind pollination and animal-mediated pollination. Wind pollination is found in a lot of trees and a lot of grasses, and they just make a ton of pollen and put it out there on the wind and hope it finds the right lady bits. Animal-mediated pollination has a bee or butterfly, hummingbird bird, or a bat that visits a flower, gets covered in pollen, and visits another and transfers it.
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There are many types of pollination that are fascinating and beautiful, but the most common generally are wind pollination and animal-mediated pollination. Wind pollination is found in a lot of trees and a lot of grasses, and they just make a ton of pollen and put it out there on the wind and hope it finds the right lady bits. Animal-mediated pollination has a bee or butterfly, hummingbird bird, or a bat that visits a flower, gets covered in pollen, and visits another and transfers it.
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