POLLINATION AND FERTILIZATION IN PLANTS
Visit a flower garden in the summer and you’ll see and hear lots of activity. Bees are buzzing and busily moving from flower to flower. Butterflies are quieter, but they’re visiting the flowers too. Ladybugs crawl and fly about. If you’re lucky, you might even see a hummingbird or two. What’s going on here? Why is everyone so busy? These animals are attracted to nectar in the flowers. Nectar is a sweet liquid deep inside a flower. It provides food for bees, butterflies and even bats. These animals need nectar to grow, and also to lay eggs. Plants help animals, but the animals are helping the plants too. When bees and other animals move around flowers, they take pollen, which forms on the male part of the flowers, the anthers, and move it to the pistils, or female parts of the flowers. If the pollen lands in the right spot, it moves down through the pistils, to the eggs, which are inside the flower. Fun Facts about Pollination and Fertilization of Plants for Kids Once the pollen...