[Pollinator] Do Flowers "Defend" their pollen?

[Peter Bernhardt]

Here's a recent publication for people interested in how bees store the
pollen they collect and the impact this storage can have on natural rates
of flower pollination.  Does the shape and sculpturing of the pollen grain
restrict where certain bees can store them?  For many flowers pollination
can't occur if their grains are packed into the corbicula of a member of
the Apidae as the grains are cemented and packed with liquid (generating
early hydration and cytoplasm death) and the receptive stigma of the flower
is never in the right position to contact either corbicula.  This
interesting interpretation uses one of the most common European
wildflowers.  Remember also that members of the mallow family (Hibiscus and
Alcea) produce some of the physically largest pollen grains in Nature.

Peter
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