Missouri Pollen Project
Welcome to the Missouri Pollen Project (MPP). Here you will find illustrations, descriptions, and keys to identification of pollen grains from plants of Missouri and much of the Midwestern United States. The goal is to provide a means of identifying pollen, as well as summarizing what is known about pollination biology of Missouri plants. The MPP is part of a larger long-term project to develop baseline data on pollen and pollinators in natural and altered communities, information that may be useful in a changing world. The keys and images will also be useful to botanists, entomologists, archeologists, paleobotanists, allergists and many others.
Navigating the MPP pages is quite simple. Individual pages for each genus are accessed through the Interactive Pollen Key . Here you will find a list of pollen characters on the left and a list of plant taxa on the right. You may scroll down the list of taxa to access the page for a particular genus. If you are trying to identify an unknown pollen grain you simply check the boxes of one or more characters and press the Matching Taxa button at the top. The list of possible taxa on the right is reduced to only those matching those characters. The list of potential characters is also revised to correspond to the remaining taxa. The Best button will show how many of the taxa share each character. A Glossary of Pollen terms is provided to refresh your memory about terminology. A brief collection of websites and references to Pollen Resources is provided to assist in finding additional information. A larger version of the images can be seen by clicking on them with the mouse.
