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A pine with male flowers releasing pollen into the wind. Features of the wind-pollination syndrome include a lack of scent production, a lack of showy floral parts (resulting in small, inconspicuous flowers), reduced production of nectar, and the production of enormous numbers of pollen grains. [4]
Other flowering plants are mostly pollinated by insects (or birds or bats), which seems to be the primitive state, and some plants have secondarily developed wind pollination. Some plants that are wind pollinated have vestigial nectaries, and other plants like common heather that are regularly pollinated by insects, produce clouds of pollen and ...
Pollination syndromes are suites of flower traits that have evolved in response to natural selection imposed by different pollen vectors, which can be abiotic (wind and water) or biotic, such as birds, bees, flies, and so forth through a process called pollinator-mediated selection.
They have green, photosynthetic stems and leaves that have been reduced to sheaths. Their flowers are extremely small and in spikelets, which in turn make up the inflorescences. Male and female flowers are on separate plants and, like grasses, are wind-pollinated.
The flowers themselves are reduced and have many features associated with wind pollination. These include: the absence of petals, green rather than colored sepals, an absence of scent or nectar, numerous anthers with long filaments, abundant, dry pollen, a large, spreading, fine fringed stigma, compounded pinnate leaves and the growth of trees ...
Self-pollination occurs when pollen from one flower pollinates the same flower or other flowers of the same individual. [45] It is thought to have evolved under conditions when pollinators were not reliable vectors for pollen transport, and is most often seen in short-lived annual species and plants that colonize new locations. [ 46 ]
During anthesis, or flowering, pollination is wind-mediated but bee pollination has been observed in at least 6 species. When pollination is zoophilous flowers can be fragrant and attract large numbers of pollinator-collecting bees to congregate around the inflorescence and take advantage of this new and abundant source of pollen.
Wind-pollinated flowers often have small, dull petals and produce little or no scent. Some of these flowers will often have no petals at all. Flowers that depend on wind pollination will produce large amounts of pollen because most of the pollen scattered by the wind tends to not reach other flowers. [15]