POLLEN COMPOSITION IN A CRASHED PLANES ENGINE

Pollen removed from engine tubing of a crashed plane near Ruidoso, New Mexico, which had been stored outdoors in partially broken boxes from May to October following a December crash, consisted almost entirely of insect-pollinated types at the near exclusion of wind-pollinated po llen. Plants producing both groups of pollen were found immediately ad jacent to the stored engine parts, with many wind-pollinated species s hedding abundant atmospheric pollen during the flowering season. There is no known mechanism whereby insect-pollinated types could selective ly have been filtered from the air at the exclusion of the predominant wind-pollinated ones. Thus, the pollen part of the mass found in the tubing could not have accumulated either suddenly or over time while t he plane was in operation, and therefore the mass must have been a pos t-crash accumulation. Furthermore, pollen taken from the same mass ini tiated pollen tube expansion in a sucrose solution and both pollen cyt oplasm and walls appeared normal in TEM sections in contrast to pollen charred for only 5 min at 250 degrees C (the crashed engine burned fo r many hours reaching at least 100 degrees C). Pollen examined from th e engine tubing could only have been deposited after the crash occurre d.