Plant In-Vitro

Ok class today we are going to study plant reproduction, particularly in plants that are incapable of reproducing the good old fashioned way.

In this case it’s my lemon tree. For plants to fruit they have to have their flowers pollenated. Which I think is kind of weird because they produce the pollen and the pollen receptacle…but have no way to move their pollen from point A to B. This is normally where bees or some other kind of insect come into play. But this lemon is kept indoors and thankfully there isn’t a hive of bees in my closet. Luckily, the flowers smell so good they attract me instead, and I get the job done. I doubt the plant cares exactly how it happens, just as long as it does.

There really isn’t much to it… I take a q-tip and collect pollen from the stamen (the little tentacle things in a flower) and then brush it all over the pistil (the stem in the middle of the flower that is covered in some kind of “pollen glue”). I am not sure why I know what the parts of a flower are called.

I usually collect pollen from a variety of flowers and mix and mingle it all together and rub the pollen potpourri on the flowers because I am not sure if the pollen will work in the same flower or if it needs pollen from a different flower.

Anyways… so that’s really all there is to making lemon babies. It’s actually kind of neat when you think about how the whole process works in nature.