Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Pollen itself is not the male gamete. [4] It is a gametophyte, something that could be considered an entire organism, which then produces 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.
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 tubes, in this case, grow between the cells of the transmission tissue (as in the case of Petunia, [21]) or through cell walls (as in Gossypium, [22]). The transmission tissue in solid styles includes an intercellular substance containing pectin , comparable to the mucilage found in the stylar canal of hollow styles.
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.
Guard cell – one of the paired epidermal cells that control the opening and closing of a stoma in plant tissue. Heartwood – the older, nonliving central wood of a tree or woody plant, usually darker and harder than the younger sapwood. Also called duramen. Herbaceous – non-woody and dying to the ground at the end of the growing season.
Tapetum is important for the nutrition and development of pollen grains and a source of precursors for the pollen coat. [1] The cells are usually bigger and normally have more than one nucleus per cell. As the sporogenous cells undergo mitosis, the nuclei of tapetal cells also divide.
At this point the end of the pollen tube bursts and releases the two sperm cells, one of which makes its way to an egg, while also losing its cell membrane and much of its protoplasm. The sperm's nucleus then fuses with the egg's nucleus, resulting in the formation of a zygote, a diploid (two copies of each chromosome) cell. [2] [92]
Each pollen grain contains a spermatogenous (generative) cell. Once the pollen lands on the stigma of a receptive flower, it germinates and starts growing a pollen tube through the carpel . Before the tube reaches the ovule , the nucleus of the generative cell in the pollen grain divides and gives rise to two sperm nuclei, which are then ...