Morphological Research on Indigenous Sambucus Species Pollen

Abstract

The pollen grains have a definite shape, size, colour, structure for each species, genus and family and these characters are useful for systematical botany. The pollen has nutritive properties due to its content: proteins, lipids, carbohydrates, vitamins, hormones and minerals. In the Romanian flora vegetate three species of Sambucus, but only S. nigra L. (elder or black elder) supplies a vegetal medical product, Sambuci flos or elder flowers, whereas the others species S. ebulus L. (dwarf elder) and S. racemosa L. (mountain elder or red elder) are considered adulterations. The pollen of Sambucus species were already studied using optical microscopy (Tarnavschi et al.), but the images are in one single layout, therefore the structure details cannot be easily notice. In this context the pollen grains of the three species already mentioned above were studied by SEM (Scanning Electron Microscopy). The results demonstrated that this pollen have a small-middle size, oblat-sphaeroidal-prolat shape, threecolpat and the exine adornments are of reticulate type, haemitectate with sticks in the meshs of polygonale net. The flavonoids content is lower than in others species (0.146-0.564 %). The SEM analyse of Sambucus pollen allow a reliable identification of the genus but less for the species.