In article ,
Stewart Robert Hinsley writes:
|
| I was assuming that you were as good as decoding the jargon as me, as I
| haven't any formal training (post age 14) in biology either.

I wasn't joking when I said I had none whatsoever :-) But, yes, I
understood the words - my problem is that that are very hard to map
to the different words used in another context without knowing the
information I know that I lack!

| Angiosperms, as you may know, have the unusual characteristic of double
| fertilisation. One sperm cell fertilizes the egg cell to produce a
| diploid zygote, and the other another cell in the female gametophyte to
| form the diploid or triploid (depending on clade) endosperm. Angiosperm
| pollens either have two or three cells; a vegetative cell, and either
| two sperm cells, or a generative cell which divides, post-germination,
| into two sperm cells. The reference to bicellular angiosperm pollens
| refers to the latter case. The vegetative cell encloses the other cell
| or cells.

Ye gods and little fishes! No, I didn't know that. That sort of sex is
so far beyond kinky that science fiction hasn't caught up with it :-)

| The key point in the quoted sentence is the reference to the vegetative
| cell of the male gametophyte (pollen grain) as a tube cell.

Thanks VERY much. A lot now falls into place. I am 90% certain that the
term "pollen tube" is used in at least some books and papers both for the
channel down the pistil and the, er, organ that grows down it from pollen
grain. That would account for my long-term confusion, anyway.

| (I've made a start on botancal jargon -
| http://www.malvaceae.info/Biology/SexDistribution.html - but I haven't
| finished the pages on pollen development and morphology.)

Thanks. That sounds interesting.


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.