Abstract
Pollen germination and pollen tube growth are common to all seed plants, but these processes first developed in gymnosperms and still serve for their successful sexual reproduction. The main body of data on the reproductive physiology, however, was obtained on flowering plants, and one should be careful to extrapolate the discovered patterns to gymnosperms. In recent years, physiological studies of coniferous pollen have been increasing, and both the features of this group and the similarities with flowering plants have already been identified. The main part of the review is devoted to physiological studies carried out on conifer pollen. The main properties and diversity of pollen grains and pollination strategies in gymnosperms are described.
Highlights
Gymnosperms are amazing representatives of the flora
Botanical and evolutionary aspects have already been described in sufficient detail in other reviews [1,2,3,4], whereas here we focus on the physiological data accumulated during the study of pollen germination in conifers; an informative overview of this topic was published in 2005 [5]
These results suggest that pollen tube wall composition may reflect the taxonomic relationship between gymnosperms as well as significant differences in their type and growth rate from flowering plants
Summary
They are ancient plants with primitive characteristics of anatomical structure; on the other hand, they are perfectly adapted to their habitat and are the dominant species in many ecosystems due to their impressive size and longevity, with their reproductive system being of particular interest It has progressive features, because in this group the reduced male gametophyte—. Pollen grain—first appeared, as well as the ability to form seeds. This group still represents a wide variety of reproductive patterns, strategies, and relationships. We mainly consider new data accumulated over the past 16 years, as well as some important aspects that were outside the focus of the previous review
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