Without pollination, everything would soon perish, and life as we know it would cease to exist. Just what is pollination? Basically, it's plant sex, says Paul James.
By shaking a corn stalk, for example, pollen from the male flower--that's the tassel at the top of the stalk--falls and lands on the female below, which is the undeveloped ear of corn. Each grain of pollen contains sperm, and each of the silks on the corn's female flower extends down to the corn ovary which, when fertilized, develops into a seed or kernel of corn. Assuming all the silks are pollinated, the result is a mouth-watering ear of corn.
With corn, both male and female flowers reside on the same plant. That's also true of squash and many cucumber varieties, but each of the flowers of a tomato have both male and female parts, so pollination can take place within a single flower. That's true of beans and numerous other vegetables.
Many fruit trees, as well as a number of other plants, require pollen from a different variety of the same plant for successful pollination. Even those that are self-pollinating tend to produce more fruit when planted near a different variety.
The agents most responsible for pollination are wind, insects and hummingbirds. Among insects, bees are the best known pollinators, which is why you want to be extremely careful when spraying chemicals of any kind in the garden, many of which are toxic to bees. It's also why farmers spend millions of dollars a year to bring truckloads of bees into their fields when their crops are in flower.
