Pollination

As a young gardener, it's essential to understand how plants create seeds and reproduce themselves.

• The stamen produces pollen, the powdery white or yellow dust you see in the bloom of a flower. Pollen carries all the genetic information (DNA) that determines the plant's specific characteristics.
• Insects, bees, birds, and the wind carry the pollen to the stigma, located in the center of the bloom.
• From there, it travels down the pistil to the ovule, where it develops into seeds.
• The entire process is called pollination.

When the pollen from one flower gets carried to the stigma of another flower, they mix their DNA, and the seeds will be a hybrid of the two original plants. If you want to grow plants with the same characteristics from year to year, simply save the seeds from your favorite blooms and plant them next year. If you would like to experiment with size, shape, and color, try creating a hybrid through cross-pollination.

planting

Kids' Valley Garden by Louise Larabie is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.