A Grain Of Pollen

All around us in the air drifts a miraculous and potent dust of life. Invisible to the naked eye, a grain of pollen yet carries a spark of fecundating life—male life. Some pollens ride the wind to seek their fortune, and you may see them rise in a golden cloud when you tease the curls of a slim alder, or tap the ripe tassels of a pine. Others enslave the dusty bee as she threads her way from flower to flower. But every pollen grain is bound upon a journey, which may be an inch in length, or hundreds of miles, and its destination is a female flower of the same species.

Without pollen no seed would set anywhere in the world, grass would wither, and the fruit tree put forth no fruit. But because of pollen the wheat in the wind bows heavy with its grain, and .the young oak rises where the old one fell. For pollen flies across the ever-present chasm of death, and starts the miracle of new life. Although so potent, pollen is frailer than a candle in a gale. Always it is in danger of dying of thirst or starvation. Unlike a seed, it has no great reserve within itself. A single drop of dew may a pollen grain, for water makes the pollen coat swell up and burst, exposing the male germ to the fatal ultraviolet rays of sunlight. A grain of corn pollen can live under natural conditions only thirty-six hours at best. A small proportion of date pollen has been found still alive after several months. But, artificially preserving it in sealed tubes at cool but freezing temperatures, plant breeders have sometimes kept apple pollen alive for half a year.

Fragile as snowflakes, prismatic as jewels, fanciful as Christmas tree ornaments, some pollens under my lens appear—to make crude comparisons—like chestnut burrs, photographs of the moon's surface, sea urchins, or clusters of those frilly paper cups around bon-bons. The basic shapes are dominantly spheres and footballs. But pollen may also take the geometric forms of cubes, tetrahedrons, and pentagon dodecahedrons. The biggest grains, such as those of pumpkin flowers, are only one one-hundredth of an inch thick; the pollen of the alpine forget-me-not is one hundred times smaller! Pollen experts can identify almost any pollen, so they can distinguish those invisible bombers —pollen of ragweed and oaks, grasses and plantain—that drop their poison on hay fever sufferers.

Indeed, there are some seventy observation posts in the United States, keeping watch on these flights—wave after wave of them, as the different types, the seasons around, come over. Specialists inform us that even an office high above the street is not sanctuary against pollinosis—as hay fever is more accurately designated.

By: davidbunch

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