EVERYDAY SCIENCE

Detailed explanation-1: -The wind or animals, especially insects and birds, pick up pollen from the male anthers and carry it to the female stigma.

Detailed explanation-2: -Most conifers and about 12% of the world’s flowering plants are wind-pollinated. Wind pollinated plants include grasses and their cultivated cousins, the cereal crops, many trees, the infamous allergenic ragweeds, and others. All release billions of pollen grains into the air so that a lucky few will hit their targets.

Detailed explanation-3: -How does pollen get from one flower to another? Flowers must rely on vectors to move pollen. These vectors can include wind, water, birds, insects, butterflies, bats, and other animals that visit flowers. We call animals or insects that transfer pollen from plant to plant “pollinators”.

Detailed explanation-4: -Wind-pollinated plants don’t normally have flowers, but when they do they are small, don’t have perfumes or nectar, produce large amounts of light pollen, have stamens and stigmas exposed to air currents to either catch or distribute pollen and don’t normally have flower petals.

Detailed explanation-5: -Pollen grains are very small and light. As such, pollen grains can easily float in the air and get transferred from the anther to the stigma within the same flower or even other flowers of the same species. So, wind is a major and good agent of pollination.