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Lesson: Chapter 14 — Continuity of Life

14.2. Fertilisation, fruits and seeds 2 of 4

Fertilisation

The male gamete present within the pollen fuses with the ovule within the ovary, and a zygote is formed. This event is called fertilisation.

This is the moment the whole flower was built for. Two gametes, each carrying half a set of chromosomes, become one cell carrying a full set — half from the plant that made the pollen and half from the plant that made the ovule.

Figure to be added

Figure 14.14 — fertilisation of gametes in plants and the formation of seeds and fruit: the pollen grain and meiosis, the ovule within the ovary, the egg cell, the pollen tube growing down the style, fertilisation, the zygote, and the embryo within its seed coat.

Pollination is not fertilisation

These two words are easily swapped and they name different events. Pollination is pollen arriving on a stigma — it is transport, and it can fail afterwards. Fertilisation is two gametes fusing inside the ovary. Pollination always comes first, and does not guarantee that fertilisation will follow — a self-sterile flower is pollinated and never fertilised.