Question

What do you mean by hydrophily?

Answer 1

Hint: Like other multicellular organisms the flowering plants also undergo sexual reproduction. The male and the female gametes get fused and zygote is formed. But the pollination process through which this phenomenon takes place is different in different plants depending on the habitats they found.

Complete Answer:
- Pollination is the process in which the pollen grains fall into the stigma for the fertilization of ovules. The pollen grain is the male reproductive part and the stigma is the female reproductive part of a flower.
- Once the pollen grain lands over the stigma, they form a pollen tube through which the pollen grain gets inside the length of the style and then to the ovule. This pollen grain then sends sperm cells to the ovary for fusion.
- Once these male and female gametes get fused fertilization takes place that results in the formation of seed.
There are two types of pollination; self pollination and cross pollination.
1) In self pollination the fertilization takes place in the single flower, when the pollen grains fall in the stigma of the same flower.
2) In cross pollination the pollen grains get transferred into the other flower with the help of pollinator, that is birds, bees, wind, and water.
- But in aquatic plants the cross pollination takes place through hypohydrophily and epihydrophily.
- Now, the hypohydrophily occurs when the pollination takes place below the surface of water, especially in submerged plants like Zostera and Ceratophyllum.
- The epihydrophily is a type of pollination that occurs on the water surface. The female flower has a long pedicel that reaches to the surface of water and the male flower after it break-down and floats on the water surface and releases pollen grain in the water.

Note: In plants of the terrestrial region, cross pollination takes place by the wind and animals. The animal pollination includes animals like bees, flies, moth, bats, and butterflies. Some of the larger animals also involve in this process such as ruffed lemurs and honey possums.