Bees are famous for collecting pollen, but that’s not the only way pollen gets around. Try building a pollen trap, and you’ll discover how much is floating in our air every day!
Safety: Do not do this activity if you are allergic to pollen.
On the card, you should see some dust and dirt. If you look closely, you may also notice some yellow grains. This is pollen. Depending on where you put them, you may find the cards have different amounts of pollen on them.
Flowering plants create pollen as part of their reproductive process. It is produced in a part of a flower called the stamen and contains some of the genetic information from the plant that created it. When the pollen from one plant is transferred to a part of a flower called a pistil, the genetic material in the pollen joins with particular cells in the flower, which then grow into seeds. This is called pollination. Pollination regularly takes place between two separate plants of the same species, although there are some plants that can pollinate themselves.
Pollen can travel from one plant to another in different ways. Some plants rely on insects that visit their flowers to spread the pollen. Others release the pollen into the air where it can float around and hopefully land on the pistils of another plant the same species.
It can be very hard to see pollen in the air, because it’s so small, but this is what you have caught on your cardboard. It is this airborne pollen that often triggers hay fever. If you have a magnifying glass or microscope, use these. You might be able to see that pollen grains from different species that have different shapes.
People who suffer from hay fever, have immune systems that react to pollen as though it were a dangerous substance, such as a virus or bacterium. Hay fever is typically caused by specific types of pollen, so sometimes people will find they only suffer from hay fever in particular places, depending on what plants are found there.
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