Plumbago zeylanica EST project. Plumbago zeylanica

Large number of ESTs have been generated from P. zeylanica. It forms an interesting system to study the process of double fertilization in flowering plants. The pollen of this plant has dimorphic sperm cells that can be differentiated based on size, structure and organelle content. The larger sperm cells have large number of mitochondria and lack plastids while the smaller cells have fewer mitochondria and abundant plastids.