During summer and fall, we all enjoy a plethora of fruits from our home gardens and from the local farmers market. Each fruit starts with a flower. Then four separate events will take place in ...

I discussed some basics of plant pollination and fertilization last week in this column. This week, let's look at some of the problems and anomalies of these processes. Every summer, questions about ...

Pollination could be a chaotic disaster. With hundreds of pollen grains growing long tubes to ovules to deliver their sperm to female gametes, how can a flower ensure that exactly two fertile sperm ...

In a typical pollination scenario, the spiky, genome-packed pollen from a flower’s male stamen attaches itself to the fuzzy torso of a bee. The bee travels to the next flower in search of more nectar, ...