Background

How do roses pollinate?

There are a couple different ways that roses can complete the pollination process. One of the ways is by insect pollination, as the insect takes nectar from the plant pollen will stick to the legs, hair or wings and then the insect will transfer the pollen to another rose. Another way roses can transfer pollen is through bird pollination, when the bird is hovering above the rose the wing movements with cause the pollen to stir and transfer to a different plant. This is also similar to wind pollination but instead of created wind it is normal wind that will transfer the pollen. Finally the last form is artificial pollination when a human will collect pollen from one rose and transfer it to a different rose.

A Beetle Pollinating a Wild Rose

http://www.fs.fed.us/wildflowers/pollinators/plantstrategies/visualcues.shtml

Pollen Shapes and Sizes There is a lot of variance in size and shape between pollen of different plants. The size varies from approximately 10 to 100 micrometers. The shape can vary from round, oval, disc, bean shaped, and filamentous. The texture of the pollens cell wall can be very different as well. Another thing worth mentioning is that pollen color can be different between species but this can't be observed with the SEM so we will not be covering this in our experiment.The cell wall consists of the outer exine wall and the inner intine wall both can be very different. We will be comparing the exine walls of different pollens because those are easily viewed using the SEM microscope. Based on the size, shape, and appearance of the pollens exine walls we should be able come to a conclusion on whether or not the pollen of plants from the same family share similar pollen traits.

Different Shapes and sizes od pollen

http://www.world-mysteries.com/newgw/bofc13.jpg

Rose Vs Primrose

Roses

In most roses they relate to many different types of fruits such: apples, peaches, cherries, pears, quince, apricot, almond, plums, blackberries, raspberries, strawberries, hawthorn. They're also valued in most European countries like Persia and Egypt. Many people use the rose as symbolism for the christian faith; they were also incorporated into food, medicine, fragrances and pieces of art throughout the Middle Ages. 

Primroses

Just to let people who don't already know this, the Primrose family, Primulaceae, is not related to the rose family, Rosaceae. They are mostly found in Asia that holds around 290 different species of primroses, there are also some species found in Europe. Primroses are mostly used for herbs and for decoration, the Europeans became fond of a species known as P. vera. Primula was given that name based off the Latin word primus which translates to "first". It was usually one of the first flowers to bloom in spring-time.

Resource:http://keeleranderson.net/Herbalwebpage/plants/Rosesprimroses.htm 

Pollen Comparison Table

Pollen Comparison Table

SEM Pictures

Primrose pollen
Captured By: Toby, Haven and Henry

This is a photo of Primrose pollen at 2000x. It is hard to see but we measured this pollen grain and it was 132 um. The Primrose Pollen was much larger than the Wild Rose or Red Rose pollen.

Primrose pollen
Captured by: Toby, Haven, and Henry

Our primrose pollen was not fully dried so most of it was covered in a fungus that was decomposing it. The fungal hyphae are the long strings wrapped around the pollen grain but you can still see through to the speckled texture of the pollen cell wall.

Red Rose Pollen
Captured By: Toby, Haven, and Henry

This is a photo of Red Rose pollen at 2000x. The top pollen grain measured to 41.3 um. This was very similar to the Red Rose that we measured at 39.1 um.

Red Rose pollen
Captured By: Toby, Haven, and Henry

This picture of a Red Rose pollen grain was taken at 20000x. The texture looks somewhat like a finger print wrinkly and curved. It looks very different from the Primrose pollen but similar to the Wild Rose.

Wild Rose Pollen
Captured By Henry, Toby And Haven

The photo above shows a picture of a single wild rose pollen at 2000X also this photo has a measurement on it showing that the pollens length is 39.1 um it is the smallest pollen out of the three and vastly different from the primrose but similar to the red rose.

Wild Rose Pollen 

Captured By Henry, Toby and Haven

This photo was taken of wild rose pollen at 5250X as you can see the closer you get to the pollen the more you can see that the surface of the pollen looks similar to a finger print. And you can see that the pollen grain only has one opening so it is known as a ……

Wild Rose Pollen 

Captured By Toby, Henry and Haven 

The photo about is of wild rose pollen at 14000X in the photo you can see the opening and and the surface looks as if it has little trails on it as well as little black dots that have no pattern to them, they are just at random. 

Primrose Pollen 

Captured By Henry, Toby and Haven 

This is a photo of fungal hyphae that is growing on the pollen, fungal hyphae is a form of mold and we think that it is growing on the pollen because the sample got stored when it was still a little damp for the fungal hyphae started to grow. 

Procedure

Preparing the SEM Stub:

1: Take the stub used in the SEM then take the carbon tape and place it on the stub then peel off the clear slip so the side facing up is sticky
*Samples cannot be wet or metallic also the sample has to be small*

2: Take a paint brush to transfer the pollen onto the carbon tape
* Take compressed Air and hold the stub, start from about a foot and a half back and come closer to the stub using a swirling motion to make sure nothing comes off the Stub and gets stuff in the SEM (repeat a couple times) *

Loading the SEM and Mapping the Image:

1. Push your stub all the way into the cup. Make sure that your sample is flush with the cup.
2. Twist the side knob of the cup four times to the right. Make sure that you always spin down your sample to the correct height.
3. Place the cup into the slot of the SEM until the green light goes on.
4. Let down the SEM door slowly because it is heavy.
5. Press the scanning button that looks like a maze and map the sample.
6. Go into settings  and press label. Label the sample with your period and the first initials of your group members.

Taking Photos and Measurements on the SEM:

When the specimen is loaded into the SEM and when you have found an image that you want to save, you press the focus button, which has a "A" and an oval shape, to get a quality picture. Then you would press the button that looks like a camera and that would save a picture to the machine. If you had a USB drive plugged into the SEM it would automatically upload the image to the drive. If you want to see the picture you would press "Archive" near the top of the screen and then click on what picture you want to see. If you wanted to see how wide or how long your zoomed in specimen, you would press the button that looks like a ruler and then use your finger and touch the part of the specimen of where you want to start the measurement and then press down on the end point of the measurement.

Here is a tutorial video is help explain the steps in more detail
Project Nano Phenom SEM

Team agreement

We plan to divide are background information into three sections. Section one's topic will be how different flowers pollinate. Section two will discuss the relation between the rose and the primrose (if there is any). The third and final section will cover different pollen sizes and shapes. I will write section three, Haven will write section one, and Toby will write section two. Also for the Procedure section of our blog we plan to divide the steps in our experiment evenly between the three of us. We plan to do the same with pictures gained from our experiment and captions describing them.
-Henry

Haven will write up the directions of how to make the SEM slide, she will do 6 photos of pollen from the SEM and include explanations with those.

Henry will write up how to load the slide into the SEM, and how to made the slide, also he with take the other 6 photos and put captions and explanations on those.

Toby will write up how to take photos, label and measure on the SEM, also he will doing the pollen grains information and the table.

Addendum:
Haven completed the Leica photos with there description/analysis
Henry and Haven completed the phylogenetic trees on both pollen morphology and protein sequences
(Toby was sick that day)
Henry did the Analysis of the phylogenetic trees

Hypothesis

The wild Rose and the Primrose will have similar shapes and sizes of pollen, but the red rose will be slightly different.

Question

Is there a variation between pollen shape and size within the Rose family?