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 Americ ...

), is a

plant Plants are the eukaryotes that form the Kingdom (biology), kingdom Plantae; they are predominantly Photosynthesis, photosynthetic. This means that they obtain their energy from sunlight, using chloroplasts derived from endosymbiosis with c ...

that provides

pollen Pollen is a powdery substance produced by most types of flowers of seed plants for the purpose of sexual reproduction. It consists of pollen grains (highly reduced Gametophyte#Heterospory, microgametophytes), which produce male gametes (sperm ...

. The word ''

pollinator A pollinator is an animal that moves pollen from the male anther of a flower to the female carpel, stigma of a flower. This helps to bring about fertilization of the ovules in the flower by the male gametes from the pollen grains. Insects are ...

'' 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 group of insects that includes all members of the order Lepidoptera that are not Butterfly, butterflies. They were previously classified as suborder Heterocera, but the group is Paraphyly, paraphyletic with respect to butterflies (s ...

s, bats, and

bird Birds are a group of warm-blooded vertebrates constituting the class (biology), class Aves (), characterised by feathers, toothless beaked jaws, the Oviparity, laying of Eggshell, hard-shelled eggs, a high Metabolism, metabolic rate, a fou ...

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 Flowers, also known as blooms and blossoms, are the reproductive structures of flowering plants ( angiosperms). Typically, they are structured in four circular levels, called whorls, around the end of a stalk. These whorls include: calyx, m ...

ing time as the pollinated plant. For example, most crabapple varieties are good pollenizers for any

apple An apple is a round, edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus'' spp.). Fruit trees of the orchard or domestic apple (''Malus domestica''), the most widely grown in the genus, are agriculture, cultivated worldwide. The tree originated ...

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

cultivar A cultivar is a kind of Horticulture, cultivated plant that people have selected for desired phenotypic trait, traits and which retains those traits when Plant propagation, propagated. Methods used to propagate cultivars include division, root a ...

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), or Chinese gooseberry, is the edible berry (botany), berry of several species of woody vines in the genus ''Actinidia''. The most common cultivar group of kiwifruit (Actinidia chinensis var. deliciosa, ...

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 sexual reproduction, sexually reproducing organisms, and thus encourage outcrossing and allogamy. It is contrasted with separation of sexe ...

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

References

{{Reflist Pollination