Self Pollination Prevented Science Project Idea

Plant Self-Pollination Prevented- Science Project Idea 

How self-pollination is prevented.  Some plants, like the willow and the cottonwood or poplar, have flowers containing only stamens on one plant and flowers having only pistils on another plant.  In these cases self-pollination is impossible.  Other plants, among which are corn and many of our common trees as ash, chestnut, oak, maple, hickory, pines, etc,, have stamens and pistils in different flowers but on the same plant.

In corn, for example, the tassel at the top of the corn plant is a collection of staminate flowers'; while the silks of the ear of corn, down along the stalk, are stigmas and styles, and the corn grains are ovaries of the pistillate flowers.  Even in these kind of plants better results occur when the pollen is carried from the anthers of another plant.  A solitary cornstalk usually has on it very poorly developed ears of corn.

In many plants the stamens ripen and the pollen escapes from the anthers before the stigmas in the same flower are ready to receive it.  In some plants the reverse is true, the stigma being ready to receive pollen before the pollen in that plant is mature.

Each silk (style and stigma) is attached at its base to the young corn grain (ovary).  Experiments have shown that in some flowers if the pollen from the same flower and pollen from a different flower of the same kind are placed side by side upon the stigma, the pollen tube of the pollen of the other flower will grow more rapidly than the tube of the pollen of the same flower.

Science Project Idea

Compare and contrast self-pollinated and cross-pollinated plants.  Show diagrammatically their differences and why they have these differences.

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