How to Use pollen grain in a Sentence

pollen grain

noun
  • Pollen count means how much pollen is in the air - it is measured by the number of pollen grains in a specific unit of air.
    Anna Kaufman, USA TODAY, 6 May 2023
  • Bigelow has pulled cores from the bottom of lakes in Western Alaska to find pollen grains and bits of ancient plants.
    Ned Rozell, Anchorage Daily News, 24 Feb. 2018
  • Note that both a pollen grain and a dust particle can be larger than 5 microns.
    Jv Chamary, Forbes, 29 May 2021
  • So far, the peak daily count was 1,171 pollen grains per cubic meter of air measured in early March.
    Ian Livingston, Washington Post, 14 Mar. 2024
  • But there’s more to it than simply looking at leaves and pollen grains under a microscope.
    Amy Stewart, Washington Post, 26 Sep. 2019
  • The flowers look like sleigh bells on a handle, and those flowers, when jingled, spew yellow pollen grains into the air.
    Lucas Joel, Quartz, 15 Aug. 2019
  • To avoid heavy-water effects, the team extracted pollen grains from the same sediment as the White Sands footprints.
    Jocelyn Solis-Moreira, Popular Science, 5 Oct. 2023
  • For example, a single corn plant produces 2 [million] to 5 million pollen grains, and an ear of corn has a few hundred seeds.
    Brigit Katz, Smithsonian, 10 May 2018
  • Expect conditions around the US to worsen as the weeds’ 1 billion pollen grains per plant (!) percolate around the country.
    Natasha Frost, Quartz, 2 Sep. 2019
  • The researchers determined the ages of pollen grains and tiny quartz crystals in sediments beside the footprints, which are buried a few feet below the surface.
    Tom Metcalfe, Scientific American, 5 Oct. 2023
  • Strong upward winds during storms can lift up pollen grains, which then get dispersed across a wider distance when downdraft winds begin.
    Dharna Noor, BostonGlobe.com, 8 Mar. 2023
  • The pollen grains are small enough to be inhaled, and some people’s immune systems react very poorly to the miniscule particles.
    Rachel Ramirez, CNN, 8 Mar. 2023
  • The solution, weak enough to avoid harming the prized plant, could help dissolve the hard exteriors of pollen grains to aid fertilization.
    Bradley White, National Geographic, 24 Dec. 2019
  • In the real world, this type of movement first came to attention in 1827 when the English botanist Robert Brown observed the random movements of pollen grains suspended in water.
    Quanta Magazine, 2 Aug. 2016
  • Real pollen grains are closer to old ping-pong balls, with large dents or grooves on their surface—these are the weak spots where a narrow tube may later burst out of the wall of the pollen grain, carrying the plant's sperm to an egg.
    Elizabeth Preston, Discover Magazine, 11 Dec. 2013
  • Researchers also analyzed thousands of pollen grains to see what plants were alive at various times.
    Malcolm Ritter, The Denver Post, 24 Oct. 2019
  • In the new study, the researchers determined the radiocarbon age of microscopic pollen grains in the sediment layers, which hadn’t grown in the lake water.
    Tom Metcalfe, Scientific American, 5 Oct. 2023
  • Following a chemical come-hither signal from the stigma, the pollen grain grows a pollen tube, a tunnel for sperm cells to travel down to reach the egg for fertilization.
    Perrin Ireland, Discover Magazine, 25 Mar. 2013
  • The wall that covers a pollen grain is quite resistant to temperature changes, helping its preservation for millions of years inside the rocks.
    Pablo Correa, Discover Magazine, 8 Dec. 2022
  • The peptides are the molecular signal that triggers the body’s immune system, so more peptides on a given pollen grain increases the severity of the allergy.
    Umair Irfan, Vox, 28 Apr. 2018
  • The lake’s calcite layers became thicker during warm years; pollen grains show how the forest composition shifted to include more heat-loving tree species.
    Emily Wright, Washington Post, 16 June 2023
  • Subsequent to that platinum spike, pollen grains indicate a drop in temperature.
    Francis Thackeray, Quartz Africa, 8 Oct. 2019
  • Traditionally scientists have used pollen grains from lakebed cores to study past plant communities.
    Paul Voosen, Science | AAAS, 10 Dec. 2019
  • Adeyeye further explains that rain can also rupture the pollen grains, breaking them into smaller particles or releasing their contents into the air.
    Elana Spivack, Scientific American, 20 Oct. 2023
  • As a result of this and other unusual qualities, everything that falls into the lake, from pollen grains to radioactive particles, gets preserved in layers of sediment that can be very precisely dated.
    Elizabeth Kolbert, The New Yorker, 20 Apr. 2024
  • Their findings indicated that the earth can often offer previews to major climate change tipping points that include ocean level rise, sediment accumulation and pollen grain fossils.
    Stephanie Innes, The Arizona Republic, 14 Aug. 2021
  • The seemingly random motion was caused by individual water molecules bumping into each pollen grain.
    Quanta Magazine, 2 Aug. 2016
  • In the layers of prehistoric sediment, organic molecules produced by marine plankton provided a window into sea conditions, and buried pollen grains preserved a record of land vegetation.
    Margaret Osborne, Smithsonian Magazine, 16 Aug. 2023
  • That wind picks up respiratory irritants such as pollen grains, fungal spores and air pollutants, including particulate matter.
    Elana Spivack, Scientific American, 20 Oct. 2023
  • Andrew Laurence, 33, and Shannon Ferguson, 32, are forensic palynologists who specialize in the identification of pollen grains.
    Nick Miroff, Washington Post, 30 Aug. 2019

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'pollen grain.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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