What Are 5 Things to Help a Plant Pollinate?

Gravity-Assisted Pollination

• Some plants are self-pollinating, meaning that their eggs can be fertilized by their own pollen. This can still lead to different genetics in their offspring, because they can lose genetic variety -- which can be good if the genes they lost are detrimental or if they get duplicate copies of beneficial genes that are more powerful with multiple copies.

  When a plant is self-pollinating, gravity assists it in getting the pollen to the female organs. The male anthers sit higher than the stigma in self-pollinating plants. When the pollen is released, it falls, due to the effects of gravity, onto the stigma, pollinating it. Self-pollinating plants include tomatoes, peppers, strawberries, beans, lettuce and spinach.

Wind

• Wind-pollinated plants, such as grasses -- including corn and grains, conifers, elm trees and other plants, like ragweed, don't waste energy growing large, showy flowers. The wind picks up the pollen from one plant and fertilizes the plants further downwind. Plants that are wind-pollinated, called anemophily, usually have a tall female pistil, which extends up beyond the top of the petals to catch the windblown pollen, and slightly shorter male anther's that also extend beyond the edge of the petals so the wind can catch the pollen and transport it.

Water

• Few land plants are water-fertilized -- called hydrophily -- but all water plants, such as seaweed, use water-assisted fertilization. Ferns are one of the few land plants that require the presence of water before they release their mobile spores. These swimming sperm then swim off in search of the closest female fern zygote. Since the spores have no control over which way the water flows, the spore and egg of water-fertilized plants have complex lock-and-key mechanisms to ensure that the spores are fertilizing the right species.

Insects

• Insect-pollinated plants are most often fertilized by bees, butterflies and flies, although wasps and ants do their share of fertilizing as well. These biotically-pollinated plants, often have large, showy flowers, bright colors and are highly scented. All of these characteristics serve to attract the bees, and other insects, that the plant needs to reproduce.

  Insect pollination terminology depends on which family is pollinating the plant so that bee pollination is melittophily, fly pollination is referred to either as myophily or sapromyophily, butterfly pollination is psychophily, and moth pollination is phalaenophily. Even some beetles pollinate plants, termed cantharophily.

Other Animals

• Bats and birds are the most common non-insect animals that pollinate plants, outside of man. Those plants that bats pollinate tend to be large and, at least in the Americas, smell sulfurous. Cactus are pollinated by bats, and hummingbirds pollinate flowers, such as trumpet flowers and honeysuckles. Called zoophilly, non-insect animal pollination isn't limited to just flying creatures. Lizards, mice, bears, elk and deer, rabbits and hares, and even monkeys can transfer pollen from one plant to another.