May Kids Corner - Spring Activities
from the Gale River Cooperative Preschool
Pollen Pollen Everywhere!
Spring has finally arrived in New Hampshire! You might be excited to see plants starting to poke up in gardens, buds forming on trees, and grass getting greener. But there’s one part of spring that’s no fun for lots of people, allergies! According to the CDC about one in five kids and one in four adults has seasonal allergies, lots of allergy sufferers in the Northeast start to notice symptoms in April.
In this Kids Corner we’ll explore the role of that pesky pollen in nature; because it's not just there to make us sneeze and sniffle!
The culprit of the first seasonal allergy symptoms of the year for many people is tree pollen. Several tree species like birches, maples, and oaks start producing pollen very early in the springtime; sometimes as early as February if it's a warm winter!
You probably know what pollen looks like. Have you ever walked outside and noticed that everything is covered in a layer of dust? Sometimes it can look like your car got really dirty overnight, but then you notice that the dust is white or yellow.
Pollen might just look like white or yellow dust to us, but under a microscope you can see that pollen from different plants comes in lots of unique shapes. Each pollen grain is covered by a hard outer coating that protects the cells inside from damage as the pollen makes its way from flower to flower.
Do you know why plants produce pollen? It’s not just to make us sneeze! Pollen is essential to the reproduction of most plants. That tough outer coating around each grain of pollen is protecting something precious, reproductive cells!
Most plants (80-90%) are called angiosperms. Angiosperm is the scientific word for a plant that produces flowers. Flowers are beautiful and important. They’re where plant reproduction takes place!
In angiosperms, pollen must travel from the anther to the stigma of a flower (circled in red on image above). The reproductive cells in pollen and the reproductive cells in the stigma combine in a process called pollination. Pollination allows plants to produce seeds and fruits.
(Note: Gymnosperms like pine and fir trees also use pollen to reproduce as you can see in the picture below. But they aren’t called angiosperms because they don’t produce flowers, they have cones instead.)
Now that you know a little more about what pollen is, can you explain the benefit of it being so small? If you said travel you’re right! Pollen has to make the journey from the anther to the stigma of a flower without just falling right to the ground. It’s light weight and small size means that it can be carried easily by the wind, rain, bees, birds, and other animals.
Pollen from different plants has to travel different distances to achieve pollination. Flowers like the one in the image above have both stamens and anthers in the same flower. Apples trees and dogwoods are examples of flowering trees with both anthers and stamens. Some plants like birch trees have a mix of flowers with stamens and flowers with anthers, so pollen needs to travel to different flowers on the same tree. Some plants like ash trees have either flowers with stamens or flowers with anthers, meaning that pollen has to travel all the way to another ash tree for the plants to produce seeds!
Luckily, flowering plants have lots of help moving pollen around. Have you heard of the term pollinator? A pollinator is an animal that helps move pollen from the anther to the stigma of flowers, either on the same flower, same plant, or different plants!
Pollinators play a crucial role in the survival of both plants and humans. About 75% of flowering plants (angiosperms) use pollinators to help them reproduce. Without pollinators our food options would be much more limited! About one in every three bites of food you eat comes from plants that rely on pollinators!
The next time you see pollen covering everything, now you know it was on its way to a flower and didn’t quite make it. No wonder trees have to produce so much!
Sources:
https://extension.umaine.edu/signs-of-the-seasons/indicator-species/red-maple-fact-sheet/
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/nchs_press_releases/2022/20220126.htm
https://www.fs.usda.gov/managing-land/wildflowers/pollinators/what-is-pollination
https://www.nps.gov/subjects/pollinators/what-is-a-pollinator.htm
Images:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?search=pollen+on+car&title=Special:MediaSearch&type=image
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?search=pollen&title=Special:MediaSearch&type=image
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7c/Mature_Flower_Image.png
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?search=bee+pollen&title=Special:MediaSearch&type=image
https://www.nps.gov/subjects/pollinators/what-is-a-pollinator.htm
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?search=red+maple+buds&title=Special:MediaSearch&type=image
Thanks to our partner, the Gale River Cooperative Preschool in Bethlehem, for helping our area parents get kiddos outside for fun no matter the time of year.
We can't wait to share the family fun we're planning with you. Keep an eye out in the coming months for announcements.
