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Pollen tube elongation is an integral stage in the plant life cycle. The pollen tube acts as a conduit to transport the male gamete cells from the pollen grain—either from the stigma (in flowering plants) to the ovules at the base of the pistil or directly through ovule tissue in some gymnosperms.
Pollen itself is not the male gamete. [4] It is a gametophyte, something that could be considered an entire organism, which then produces the male gamete.Each pollen grain contains vegetative (non-reproductive) cells (only a single cell in most flowering plants but several in other seed plants) and a generative (reproductive) cell.
The pollen enters a pollen chamber close to the nucellus, and there it may wait for a year before it germinates and forms a pollen tube that grows through the wall of the megasporangium (=nucellus) where fertilisation takes place. During this time, the megaspore mother cell divides by meiosis to form four haploid cells, three of which degenerate.
The pollen is carried to the pistil of another flower, by wind or animal pollinators, and deposited on the stigma. As the pollen grain germinates, the tube cell produces the pollen tube, which elongates and extends down the long style of the carpel and into the ovary, where its sperm cells are released in the megagametophyte.
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If the pollen is compatible it will germinate and begin to grow. [5] The ovary releases chemicals that stimulates a positive chemotropic response from the developing pollen tube. [6] In response the tube develops a defined tip growth area that promotes directional growth and elongation of the pollen tube due to a calcium gradient. [5]
The style is a hollow tube in some plants, such as lilies, or has transmitting tissue through which the pollen tubes grow. [15] The stigma (from Ancient Greek στίγμα, stigma, meaning mark or puncture) is usually found at the tip of the style, the portion of the carpel(s) that receives pollen (male gametophytes). It is commonly sticky or ...
The pollen tubes, in this case, grow between the cells of the transmission tissue (as in the case of Petunia, [21]) or through cell walls (as in Gossypium, [22]). The transmission tissue in solid styles includes an intercellular substance containing pectin , comparable to the mucilage found in the stylar canal of hollow styles.