Popular Science | Have you ever seen rice bloom?

The rice is in bloom, the rice is in bloom!

Rice flowers are too small, and it is very difficult to see the flowering process clearly.

Rice flowers have 6 stamens and 1 pistil.

The flowering of rice is a wonderful process. When the temperature rises near noon, the carbon dioxide content in the spikelet increases, and the lodicule cell walls at the bottom of the inner and outer glume relax and begin to absorb water, expanding in volume and pushing the outer glume outward, and the flower blooms.

The rice ear consists of the rachis and stalks.

The flowering of rice is based on seniority.

On the same branch, the second spikelet at the top is often the last to bloom.

Rice is a self-pollinating crop. But when hybrid rice is produced, the female plant will extend the entire pistil outside the lemma, anxiously waiting for the pollen ejected by the male plant's stamen to stick to its stigma. That is cross-pollination!

When the stamens mature, pollen is ejected from the anthers in 0.1 seconds and sticks to the stigma of the pistil.

The pollen will quickly absorb water, germinate, and begin double fertilization. One pollen sperm cell combines with an egg cell in the embryo sac to develop into a carrier of life for the next generation; the other pollen sperm cell combines with a polar nucleus cell in the embryo sac to develop into endosperm, which is the rice we eat.

When farmers are driving pollen for hybrid seed production, they will see pollen like fog and smell the fragrance of rice flowers.

It is really like “the fragrance of rice flowers heralds a good harvest”!