Bee pollination

Bee pollination [ Botany ]
Melittophily or Hymenopterophly

Dictionary of botanic terminology
index of names

The melittophily is the pollination carried by bees

Pollination by bees is also referred as Melittophily or hymenopterophly.
Melittophilous plants have sweetly scented diurnal flowers that shed their pollen during the day when bees are active, they are generally yellow or blue (rarely red), colours that bees can easily see, they have good, strong landing platforms, and they generally have nectar guides.

Bees travel from flower to flower, collecting nectar (converted to honey later), and in the process pick up pollen grains. The bee collects the pollen by rubbing against the anthers. The pollen collects on the hind legs, in dense hairs referred to as a pollen basket. As the bee flies from flower to flower, the pollen grains are transferred onto the stigma of the female flower part. Nectar provides the energy for bee nutrition, pollen provides the protein. Furthermore, several melittophilous flowers imitate the shapes and the sex perfumes of female insects in order to attract the males that are the pollinators. There might be as many as 40,000 species of l bees that pollinate the majority of the 240,000 species of flowering plants. As insects, bees are relatively intelligent and are able to learn how to locate and operate particular species of flowers that are in bloom at a particular time. They are also relatively strong and are able to push their way into complicated flowers that are not accessible to other insects.

Melittophilous plants


	Plants pollinated by bees.

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Holdfast roots [ Botany ]
Dictionary of botanic terminology - index of names

Some species of climbing plants develop holdfast roots which help to support the vines on trees, walls, and rocks. By forcing their way into minute pores and crevices, they hold the plant firmly in place.

Climbing plants, like the poison ivy (Toxicodendron radicans), Boston ivy (Parthenocissus tricuspidata), and trumpet creeper (Campsis radicans), develop holdfast roots which help to support the vines on trees, walls, and rocks. By forcing their way into minute pores and crevices, they hold the plant firmly in place. Usually the Holdfast roots die at the end of the first season, but in some species they are perennial. In the tropics some of the large climbing plants have hold-fast roots by which they attach themselves, and long, cord-like roots that extend downward through the air and may lengthen and branch for several years until they strike the soil and become absorbent roots.

Major references and further lectures:
1) E. N. Transeau “General Botany” Discovery Publishing House, 1994