Pollinator Syndrome

Wind and water pollination

Ponderosa pine branch tip shows needles and young cones.

Grass flower

Thumbnail an information sheet published by the USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, forbidden! Federal Republic of noxious weeds: The Water Park.
Forbidden! Federal Republic of harmful Weeds: The Aquatics (PDF)

Many flowers are pollinated without the help of animals (insects, birds or mammals). Here are a few examples.
Wind pollination

Most conifers and about 12% of the world's flowering plants are wind-pollinated. They include grasses and their cultivated cousins, the cereal crops, many trees; the notorious allergens ragweeds; and others. All release billions of pollen grains in the air, so a lucky few will hit their targets.

Wind-pollinated flowers are typically:

* No bright colors, special smell, or nectar
* Small
* Most have no petals
* Strain and stigma exposed to air currents
* Large amount of pollen
* Pollen smooth, bright, light airborne
* Stigma feathery to catch pollen from the wind
* May have staminate and pistillate flower, can monoecious or dioecious
* Normally, single-seeded fruit, such as oak, grass, birch, poplar, hazelnut, dock, cat-tail, plantain, and Papyrus

Water-pollination

Pollen can also float on the water's surface sliding until it contacts flowers. This is called surface hydrophily and are relatively rare. This water-assisted pollination occurs in waterweeds and pondweeds. In very few cases, pollen travels underwater use.

Many of the water-pollinated plants has become invasive throughout the United States. To learn more, visit these invasive species websites:

* U. S. Forest Service Invasive Species Program
* National Invasive Species Information Center

Photo by T. Barnes, University of
Kentucky.