Pollen

📖 In short

Pollen is made of tiny grains like dust, made by the male parts of flowers. When a grain of pollen reaches the female part of a flower, seeds form. This moving of pollen is called pollination.

🤩 Did you know?

The wind can carry pollen 150 kilometers or more.
A single corn plant makes more than 18 million grains of pollen.
Every kind of plant has pollen of a special shape, which scientists can see under the microscope.
Bees collect pollen in little baskets on their legs.

🔎 Find out more

🌟 Yellow dust

If you touch the middle of a lily or a sunflower, yellow or orange dust may stay on your finger. That dust is pollen!

🔍 Who carries it?

Bees, butterflies and hummingbirds carry pollen as they collect nectar: it sticks to their bodies and moves to another flower. For some plants, the wind carries the pollen.

💡 Bees, pollination champions

Bees are the most important pollen carriers and help make lots of the fruit and vegetables we eat. That's why protecting bees matters so much for our food.