 Trees like cycad, cedar and pine, they are gymnasperms. They don't produce flowers, instead they have reproductive organs called cones. So here we have right here is a female cone from a pine tree and these are male cones. So in this video we are going to look at the structure of the male cone. This here is a male cone. A cone is also called strobulus and the plural is strobilii. So a strobulus or a cone is made up of these smaller structures. So let's take a look at them in more detail. So this here is one of these smaller structures and is called a sporophyll. A sporophyll is nothing but a modified leaf. So spor you know and fill means leaf. So sporophyll is a modified leaf which is involved in producing spores. Now inside the sporophyll there is this round yellow structure that you see which is the sporangium and naturally the tiny dots inside that you see are the spores. So each of these tiny things are the spores. Now there is one thing that you have to keep in mind the male spores are always microspores. Why? Because they are much smaller than the female ones. So this here is a microspore and this is male and a megaspore is much bigger and is female. So over here whatever is concerned with spores are called micros. So this is a microsporangium, the yellow a big circle is a microsporangium, the tiny dots are the microspores and the sporophyll is the microsporophyll. The microspores are produced inside the microsporangium and with time the spores mature to form the pollen green. So these here are the pollen grains. Each pollen grain is nothing but the male gametophyte. Now you might remember from bryophytes and pteridophytes that gametophytes are much bigger. They are actually free living plants that can live by themselves, they are not dependent on anything and they can produce their own nutrition and so forth. But over here the male gametophyte is so tiny the pollen grain you can hardly see them with naked eyes. This is what happened when plants evolved. From bryophytes to pteridophytes the gametophyte became smaller and then when plants evolved to gymnosperms from pteridophytes the gametophytes became even smaller, much much smaller. Not only are they small they are quite dependent on the sporophyte. They cannot produce their own nutrition. The pollen grains will of course be released when they are mature but till the time they are maturing they are completely dependent on the sporophyte. What is the sporophyte? It is the big plant that is harboring this cone or the strobilus. So this is pretty much it about the male cone or the male strobilus in gymnosperms. So let's summarize what we have seen so far. The male strobilus is also called the male cone and it looks like this. And inside the male strobilus or the male cone there are these smaller structures each of which is a microsporophyll and then inside the microsporophyll there is this yellow round structure which is the microsporangium. It's also called sporsac and inside the microsporangium are these spores which when they mature they form the male gametophytes also called the pollen grains.