Video Overview
Plants that produce flowers are known as flowering plants. The scents and brightly colored
petals of flowers help to attract insects such as bumblebees and butterflies.
Flowers produce a sweet, sticky substance called nectar, which insects use as food. Bees also
use nectar to make honey. Insects like bees and butterflies depend on plants for food.
Some plants depend on insects too. Plants cannot move around; therefore, some of them need
insects to help them reproduce.
Insects like bees help carry pollen from the male part of one flower of a plant to the female
part of another flower, which helps the plant to reproduce. This process is known as
pollination.
Once a flowering plant has been pollinated, it produces fruit. Fruits contain seeds that grow
into new plants. When the new plant grows flowers, it can reproduce. This is called the life
cycle of a flowering plant.
Each part of the flower has a purpose.
| Part of the Flower |
Description |
| Petal |
The colorful part that attracts animals or insects |
| Anther |
The part that makes pollen |
| Stigma |
The part that receives pollen |
We can show how pollen is transported from one flower to another using a model.
Our bee is made of a yellow cotton ball and two pipe cleaners, one black and one white.
The white pipe cleaner is used to make the wings.
The black pipe cleaner is used to make the bee’s stripes.
Our model flowers are artificial flowers, with large anthers and stigmas.
A mixture of syrup and glitter is added to the anthers of one of the flowers.
Our bee collects pollen from the anthers of one flower.
The bee delivers the pollen to the stigma of the other flower.
The pollen on the stigma will travel down the style to the ovary and fertilize the egg. After that,
the egg will produce a fruit.
So, we have shown how pollen can be transferred from one flower to another by a bee.
What can you use to make your own model? To pollinate your flower, you can use a different insect or another pollinator altogether, such as a hummingbird or a bat.
The next time you see a flower, look closely; you might see a busy bee helping a flower to reproduce.
