Anemophilous pollination (By Air)

What is the anemophilous pollination? Concept and definition

The anemophilous pollination is one of the types of abiotic pollination (that is to say, where to animal pollenizers nor insects participate neither pollenizers), that main pollenizer tells on the wind (*) as agent.

(*) We can define to the wind as the movement that makes the originating air of a region of high pressure towards another one of low pressure. To what it must his existence to him? To the irregular heating that the sun realises on the Earth. As the hot air raises, the cold moves to fill those empty spaces.

Anemophilous pollination

To the being a transference without direction nor direction, the result is a great amount of pollen, of small and/or dry and smooth size. It is a process of easy dispersion and transfer. The nettles, alders, oaks, birches, you have, the great majority of the coniferous or the pulses, are some examples of contributor plants in this process of pollination.

The anemophily is a type of abiotic pollination

In addition, one calculates that, in the temperate climate ecosystems, the proportion of plants pollinated by the wind is a little greater than in tropical ecosystems.

Other cases exist in which the plants adapt of different way from this process. Through the feathery stigmata, for example, that are those that facilitates the capture of the pollen transported by the wind. or by means of some €œlong threads€, calls estaminales filaments, constituted by anthers in the ends, hung and set out to the wind.

What happens with the flower, then? In these cases, it ends up producing majors amounts of pollen to obtain that at least one of the grain ones reaches the flower to fertilize, reason why is considered that it has a low efficiency. In addition, they release to less variety and amount of chemical compounds responsible for its perfume that the pollinated ones with the wind.

Hidrofilia, another case of abiotic pollination

The water is the other contributor agent in the group that register within the abiotic pollination. Those cases one knows them by the name hidrofilia (pollination by water), although is not a very common method. In certain occasions, the drops of rain can sprinkle and transfer grains towards the stigma of the own species. In others, the pollen of a flower can float until arriving at the feminine organ, or to move through water obstacles for would find with the stigmata.

Summarizing, the anemophilous pollination is a abiotic method of pollen transference, of simple transfer, produced by the wind, to allow the pollination, that is to say, the fertilization of the plants.

Other types of pollination

In addition to the anemophilous pollination they exist a great variety of types of pollination, such as:

Crossed pollination

Abiotic pollination

Pollination hydrophilia

Biotic pollination

Pollination entom³fila

Pollination ornit³fila

Pollination zo³fila