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The pollen wall protects the sperm while the pollen grain is moving from the anther to the stigma; it protects the vital genetic material from drying out and solar radiation. The pollen grain surface is covered with waxes and proteins, which are held in place by structures called sculpture elements on the surface of the grain.
Stigma also ensure proper adhesion of the correct species of pollen. Stigma can play an active role in pollen discrimination and some self-incompatibility reactions, that reject pollen from the same or genetically similar plants, involve interaction between the stigma and the surface of the pollen grain.
The stigma (from Ancient Greek στίγμα, stigma, meaning mark or puncture) is usually found at the tip of the style, the portion of the carpel(s) that receives pollen (male gametophytes). It is commonly sticky or feathery to capture pollen. The word "pistil" comes from Latin pistillum meaning pestle.
The pollen enters a pollen chamber close to the nucellus, and there it may wait for a year before it germinates and forms a pollen tube that grows through the wall of the megasporangium (=nucellus) where fertilisation takes place. During this time, the megaspore mother cell divides by meiosis to form four haploid cells, three of which degenerate.
Pollen tube elongation is an integral stage in the plant life cycle. The pollen tube acts as a conduit to transport the male gamete cells from the pollen grain—either from the stigma (in flowering plants) to the ovules at the base of the pistil or directly through ovule tissue in some gymnosperms.
The pollen is carried to the pistil of another flower, by wind or animal pollinators, and deposited on the stigma. As the pollen grain germinates, the tube cell produces the pollen tube, which elongates and extends down the long style of the carpel and into the ovary, where its sperm cells are released in the megagametophyte.
On the surface of the stigma, the pollen germinates; that is, the male gametophyte penetrates the pollen wall into the stigma, and a pollen tube, an extension of the pollen grain, extends towards the carpel, carrying with it the sperm cells (male gametes) until they encounter the ovule, where they gain access through a pore in the ovule's ...
Pollen of angiosperms must be transported to the stigma, the receptive surface of the carpel, of a compatible flower, for successful pollination to occur. After arriving, the pollen grain (an immature microgametophyte) typically completes its development. It may grow a pollen tube and undergo mitosis to produce two sperm nuclei.