European Palaeobotany and Palynology Conference 2026

3D-printed pollen models have been extensively used in research, education and outreach. Wilson (2023) introduced the 3D Pollen Project using confocal laser scanning microscopy (CLSM) to produce accurate series of tightly-focused cross-section images through pollen grains, then produced 3D-printable surface files. Here I present 3D-printed pollen models for over 50 Chinese plant species (MPV 1.0, Make-Pollen-Visible Project), using high-resolution and multiple images of scanning electron microscopy (SEM) to reconstruct STL (Standard Tessellation Language) files for 3D-printing. The sculpture patterns are clearly visible, almost identical to SEM pollen images.
China’s vegetation types are remarkably diverse, encompassing over 30,000 species of seed plants. However, a substantial number of plant species have yet to carry out detailed pollen morphological investigation. Thus both new pollen flora illustrated with pollen images by light microscope (LM) and 3D-printed pollen models are useful in future palynological practice, and especially the 3D-printed pollen models are better for beginners of pollen analysis than 2-dimension pollen images to have a full understanding of pollen morphology. More 3D-printable pollen surface files are awaited to be produced in this project.