Divya Bhatnagar, age 10, of Louisville, Kentucky, for her question:
How do Arctic flowers get pollinated?
The lands around the Arctic Ocean sleep through a long, cold and dark winter. Then they wake up to enjoy the busiest summer season in the whole world. The spring sun returns and melts the surface of the frozen tundra. The soggy ground bursts forth with low growing greenery and in a few weeks the landscape is covered with assorted flowers that rival the rainbow.
Meantime, flocks of birds return to their nesting rounds and swarms of newly hatched insects take to the air. Some of the tundra pollen is blown by the breezes from flower to flower. Other blossoms are pollinated by the teeming insects, searching for syrupy nectar. The same methods of pollination go on in our temperate zones. But on the Arctic tundra, there are many more insects to help with the job.