Why does wind pollinated plants produce more pollen?

Thus wind is highly inefficient to pollinate, natural selection benefited thous plants that generated abundant pollen over the others, raising the chances of pollen to reach another plant..

Why does wind pollinated plants produce more pollen?
Insect-pollinated plants have a big advantage versus wind-pollinated plants in that the insect carries the pollen right to the flower. With wind-pollinated plants the plant is basically casting the pollen up into the air and hoping by random chance that some will land on an appropriate flower.





Think of it this way, say you are a 50 yards from a basketball court, if you had a ball, and you wanted to make a basket, with insect-pollinated plants, the insect carries the ball close to the basket and throws up a shot. With wind pollination, you don't have anything but the wind to carry the ball, so you have to throw up thousands of shots before one, by random chance, fell into the hoop.





But there is a cost to insect pollinated plants. They have to expend a lot of energy to make the showy flowers that attract the insects. Flowers that produce wind dispersed pollen are typically small and don’t cost the plant anywhere near as much energy.