Pollen Pollen Pollen is a fine to coarse powdery substance comprising pollen grains which are male microgametophytes of seed plants, which produce male gametes (sperm cells). Pollen grains have a hard coat made of sporopollenin that protects the gametophytes during the process of their movement from the stamens to the pistil of flowering plants, or from the male cone to the female cone of coniferous plants. If pollen lands on a compatible pistil or female cone, it germinates, producing a pollen tube that transfers the sperm to the ovule containing the female gametophyte. Individual pollen grains are small enough to require
Corn silk Corn silk is part stigma and part style, providing a female flower surface to which pollen grains can adhere and defining the lengthy path through which the pollen must transmit its genetic material. The stigma is the very tip of the corn silk, which has a larger number of hairs to help pollen to adhere to it. Kernel formation in the cob requires pollination of the external corn silk by wind or insects. Usually several grains of pollen adhere, but only one will successfully participate in fertilization of the ovule to form a corn kernel. For the pollen grain, the