Aperture (botany) Aperture (botany) Apertures are areas on the walls of a pollen grain, where the wall is thinner and/or softer. For germination it is necessary that the pollen tube can reach out from the inside of the pollen grain and transport the sperm to the egg deep down in the pistil. The apertures are the places where the pollen tube is able to break through the (elsewhere very tough) pollen wall. The number and configuration of apertures are often very exactly characteristic of different groups of plants. The biggest class of plant species, the Eudicots, usually have three apertures in each
Cortex (botany) cylinder of the root through diffusion and may also be used for food storage in the form of starch. Cortex (botany) A cortex is the outermost layer of a stem or root in a plant. In botany, the cortex is the outermost layer of the stem or root of a plant, bounded on the outside by the epidermis and on the inside by the endodermis. In plants, it is composed mostly of differentiated cells, usually large thin-walled parenchyma cells of the ground tissue system. The outer cortical cells often acquire irregularly thickened cell walls, and are called collenchyma cells. Some