Pollenizers

{{Unreferenced, date=May 2009 A pollenizer (or polleniser), sometimes pollinizer (or polliniser, see

spelling differences Despite the various English dialects spoken from country to country and within different regions of the same country, there are only slight regional variations in English orthography, the two most notable variations being British and American ...

) is a

plant Plants are predominantly photosynthetic eukaryotes of the kingdom Plantae. Historically, the plant kingdom encompassed all living things that were not animals, and included algae and fungi; however, all current definitions of Plantae exclu ...

that provides pollen. The word '' pollinator'' is often used when ''pollenizer'' is more precise. A pollinator is the biotic agent that moves the pollen, such as bees,

moth Moths are a paraphyletic group of insects that includes all members of the order Lepidoptera that are not butterflies, with moths making up the vast majority of the order. There are thought to be approximately 160,000 species of moth, many of w ...

bat Bats are mammals of the order Chiroptera.''cheir'', "hand" and πτερόν''pteron'', "wing". With their forelimbs adapted as wings, they are the only mammals capable of true and sustained flight. Bats are more agile in flight than most ...

s, and

bird Birds are a group of warm-blooded vertebrates constituting the class Aves (), characterised by feathers, toothless beaked jaws, the laying of hard-shelled eggs, a high metabolic rate, a four-chambered heart, and a strong yet lightweig ...

s. Bees are thus often referred to as ' pollinating insects'. The verb form ''to pollenize'' is to be the source of pollen, or to be the sire of the next plant generation. While some plants are capable of self-pollenization, ''pollenizer'' is more often used in

pollination management Pollination management is the horticultural practices that accomplish or enhance pollination of a crop, to improve yield or quality, by understanding of the particular crop's pollination needs, and by knowledgeable management of pollenizers, p ...

for a plant that provides abundant, compatible, and viable pollen at the same

flower A flower, sometimes known as a bloom or blossom, is the reproductive structure found in flowering plants (plants of the division Angiospermae). The biological function of a flower is to facilitate reproduction, usually by providing a mechani ...

ing time as the pollinated plant. For example, most

crabapple ''Malus'' ( or ) is a genus of about 30–55 species of small deciduous trees or shrubs in the family Rosaceae, including the domesticated orchard apple, crab apples, wild apples, and rainberries. The genus is native to the temperate zone o ...

varieties are good pollenizers for any

apple An apple is an edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus domestica''). Apple trees are cultivated worldwide and are the most widely grown species in the genus ''Malus''. The tree originated in Central Asia, where its wild ancestor, ' ...

tree that blooms at the same time, and are often used in apple orchards for the purpose. Some apple

cultivar A cultivar is a type of cultivated plant that people have selected for desired traits and when propagated retain those traits. Methods used to propagate cultivars include: division, root and stem cuttings, offsets, grafting, tissue culture ...

s produce very little pollen or pollen that is sterile or incompatible with other apple varieties. These are poor pollenizers. A pollenizer can also be the male plant in dioecious species (where entire plants are of a single sex), such as with

kiwifruit Kiwifruit (often shortened to kiwi in North American, British and continental European English) or Chinese gooseberry is the edible berry of several species of woody vines in the genus '' Actinidia''. The most common cultivar group of kiwi ...

holly ''Ilex'' (), or holly, is a genus of over 570 species of flowering plants in the family Aquifoliaceae, and the only living genus in that family. ''Ilex'' has the most species of any woody dioecious angiosperm genus. The species are evergreen o ...

. Nursery catalogs often specify that a

should be planted as a "pollinator" for another cultivar, when they actually should be referring to it as a ''pollenizer''. Strictly, a plant can only be a pollinator when it is

self-fertile Self-incompatibility (SI) is a general name for several genetic mechanisms that prevent self-fertilization in sexually reproducing organisms, and thus encourage outcrossing and allogamy. It is contrasted with separation of sexes among individuals ...

and it physically pollinates itself without the aid of an external pollinator. Pollination