Pollenkor

Pollenkor is a term that appears in a minority of botanical glossaries to denote the outer component of a pollen grain. It is not widely standardized in English-language pollen biology, and its usage varies across languages and sources. In many contemporary texts, pollen grain structure is described in terms of the exine (the outer wall) and the intine (the inner wall), with the external material sometimes collectively referred to as the pollen coat rather than as pollenkor.

In standard pollen anatomy, the exine is the resistant outer layer formed largely from sporopollenin, providing durability and species-specific surface sculpturing. The intine lies beneath the exine and is composed mainly of cellulose and pectins. The pollen coat, which can be external to the exine in some descriptions, is a lipid- and protein-rich layer produced during pollen development by the tapetum and often contains enzymes and compounds that aid in hydration and germination on the stigma.

If pollenkor appears in non-English sources, it often corresponds to one of these outer components depending on the author, but the term’s meaning is inconsistent. Consequently, many botanists prefer using more precise terms such as exine or pollen coat to avoid ambiguity. Understanding the outer layers of pollen is important in fields like palynology, plant reproductive biology, and paleobotany, where pollen wall morphology supports taxonomic classification and ecological inference.