overpollinate, verb (used with object), overpollinated, overpollinating.
Examples from the web for pollinate
These tiny fig wasps work their way inside the fruit and pollinate it, laying their eggs inside and then dying inside.
Looked at another way, it might encourage owners of forests that help to pollinate a neighbour's crops to demand payment.
There are dozens of species of native bees equally willing to pollinate your plants.
So even if the plants self-pollinate, you can get different and interesting flowers.
If you aren't sure which apples will cross-pollinate, they'll tell you.
During this floral feeding process, the birds pollinate many plants.
Bumblebees pollinate important crops, such as blueberries and tomatoes.
Butterflies and bees have fewer flowers to pollinate.
But there are certain wild varieties of crops that pollinate in the wee hours of the morning, before sunrise.
All the plants that insects pollinate would disappear.
British Dictionary definitions for pollinate
pollinate
/ˈpɒlɪˌneɪt/
verb
1.
(transitive) to transfer pollen from the anthers to the stigma of (a flower)
Derived Forms
pollination, noun pollinator, noun
Word Origin and History for pollinate
v.
1873, back formation from pollination, or else from pollin-, stem of Latin pollen (see pollen) + -ate (2). Related: Pollinated; pollinating.
pollinate in Science
pollination
(pŏl'ə-nā'shən) The process by which plant pollen is transferred from the male reproductive organs to the female reproductive organs to form seeds. In flowering plants, pollen is transferred from the anther to the stigma, often by the wind or by insects. In cone-bearing plants, male cones release pollen that is usually borne by the wind to the ovules of female cones.
pollinate verb
Our Living Language: When a pollen grain lands on or is carried to the receptive tissue of a pistil known as the stigma, the flower has been pollinated. But this is only the first step in a complicated process that, if successful, leads to fertilization. The pollen grain contains two cells—a generative cell and a tube cell. The generative nucleus divides to form two sperm nuclei. The tube cell grows down into the pistil until it reaches one of the ovules contained in the ovary. The two sperm travel down the tube and enter the ovule. There, one sperm nucleus unites with the egg. The other sperm nucleus combines with the polar nuclei that exist in the ovule, completing the process known as double fertilization. These fertilized nuclei then develop into the endocarp, the tissue that feeds the embryo. The ovule itself develops into a seed that is contained in the flower's ovary (which ripens into a fruit). In gymnosperms, the ovule is exposed (that is, not contained in an ovary), and the pollen produced by the male reproductive structures lands directly on the ovule in the female reproductive structures. Fertilization in conifers can be slow in comparison to flowering plants—the pollen nuclei of pines, for example, take as long as 15 months to reach the ovule after landing on the female cone. And there are variations: In the ginkgo, the ovules fall off the tree and pollination occurs on the ground.