page_title: Pollen
section_title: Structure and formation
hierarchical_section_title: Pollen / Structure and formation
caption_attribution_description: English: The pollen of Showy Primrose (Oenothera speciosa) (magnified 200x)
context_page_description: Pollen is a powdery substance consisting of pollen grains which are male microgametophytes of seed plants, which produce male gametes. Pollen grains have a hard coat made of sporopollenin that protects the gametophytes during the process of their movement from the stamens to the pistil of flowering plants, or from the male cone to the female cone of coniferous plants. If pollen lands on a compatible pistil or female cone, it germinates, producing a pollen tube that transfers the sperm to the ovule containing the female gametophyte. Individual pollen grains are small enough to require magnification to see detail. The study of pollen is called palynology and is highly useful in paleoecology, paleontology, archaeology, and forensics.
  Pollen in plants is used for transferring haploid male genetic material from the anther of a single flower to the stigma of another in cross-pollination. In a case of self-pollination, this process takes place from the anther of a flower to the stigma of the same flower.
  Pollen is infrequently used as food and food supplement. Because of agricultural practices, it is often contaminated by agricultural pesticides.
context_section_description: Pollen itself is not the male gamete. Each pollen grain contains vegetative (non-reproductive) cells (only a single cell in most flowering plants but several in other seed plants) and a generative (reproductive) cell. In flowering plants the vegetative tube cell produces the pollen tube, and the generative cell divides to form the two sperm cells.
caption: Triporate pollen of Oenothera speciosa
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