Background

We watched a video on pollen in vitro involving asian lilies. It showed very rapid pollen tube growth (300 nm/sec) which made us believe that there will be much more distinguished change between our samples. The video shows the pollen grains growing from water absorption in order to make a pollen tube to distribute the sperm down to the ovary. Although we are looking at changes in developed pollen, it's interesting to see the beginning stages of how pollen is originally formed.

the video



This link is a long article on lilies and has lots of details and photographs of all the different parts of lilies, including a little on pollen. this is helpful to our experiment because all of our three plants that we are using are lilies so we need lots of information on lilies.

http://www.microscopy-uk.org.uk/mag/indexmag.html?http://www.microscopy-uk.org.uk/mag/artfeb08/bj-lilies.html



Background information on pollen:
A pollen grain consists of two cells: a generative cell and a tube cell. A hard, resistant wall will form around the two cells in order to complete the pollen grains; the wall is rich in cellulose.  The spore wall of the pollen grains will show the differences in size, shape, and surface markings and can therefore be used to identify the species of a sample.

The image above is an example of how the outer spore wall of pollen grains vary in size, shape, and structure; which is what makes each species distinguishable. 

Source: http://www.vcbio.science.ru.nl/en/virtuallessons/pollendevelopment/