Plants
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Life, Plants, s.v. "Flowers and pollen," accessed August 6, 2026.
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Flowers and pollen
A plant’s flower is the reproductive part of a plant. Here the plant makes seeds which grow into new plants. A typical flowering plant has both male and female parts contained in the flower. Tiny particles, called pollen, which, to the naked eye, look like fine yellow powder, must travel from the anthers (on the male parts) of one flower to the stigma (on the female part) of another of the same kind. When this happens the male and female cells can join and develop into seeds, from which new plants can grow.
Male and female parts
The reproductive parts of the flower are usually in the centre. Some flowers have only male or female parts rather than both. The male reproductive part of a flower, consisting of an anther and filament, is called a stamen. Pollen is produced in the bag-like anthers on stalks, called filaments. Each pollen grain contains a male cell.
The female reproductive organ of a flower, consisting of an ovary, style and stigma, is called a carpel. The female cells or ovules (eggs) are in the ovary, a fleshy part at the flower’s base. A taller part, called the style, sticks up from this, with the stigma at its top. Some flowers have one carpel, while others have a cluster of carpels, called a pistil.
Pollen
Seen under a microscope, a pollen grain shows grooves, spikes and other structures. Each kind of plant has its own pattern. Some pollen grains are light and balloon-like and are blown by the wind. Some look like tiny parachutes. Others are sticky and carried by animals—birds (including hummingbirds, sunbirds and honeyeaters), mammals (including bats, monkeys, lemurs, rodents and possums) and especially insects.
Pollination
The transfer of pollen is called pollination. In order to attract animals to pollinate it, the flower has colourful petals and a strong scent and makes a sugary liquid called nectar. When animals come to drink the nectar, the pollen sticks on them. It brushes off at the next flower on to the stigma. A tube grows from the pollen grain down the style to the ovary. The male cell moves down this to join the ovule. Some flowers, such as dandelions, are self-fertilizing: they pollinate themselves.
Honeybees and bumblebees are the best-known insect pollinators, but ants, wasps, beetles, flies, butterflies and moths are also essential for helping plants reproduce.
The largest flower
The largest flower in the world is Rafflesia. It lives in the rainforests of Southeast Asia. It is a parasite, so called because it takes its food from another plant (its host), the jungle vine, to which it is attached by long, thin threads. Rafflesia's one huge flower can measure up to 90 centimetres (3 feet) across and may weigh more than a one-year-old child. Also known as the stinking corpse lily, it smells like rotting meat.
The smallest flower
This picture shows Wolffia, the world’s tiniest flowering plant, hugely magnified and cut open from one side. Its flowers grow inside a special hollow. About the size of a comma, Wolffia cannot be studied properly without a magnifying glass.
Millions of these floating plants mass together to form a green layer on ponds: they are commonly known as duckweed. There are about a dozen sorts of Wolffia in different parts of the world. The very smallest kind, Wolffia arrhiza, is native to Europe, Africa and parts of Asia.
Consultant: Chris Jarvis
pics
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