In members of aster family, flowering of a disc floret is a curious process. Stamens fuse edge to edge into a vertical tube, a cylinder with a central cavity, and their anthers release pollen into it before the floret fully opens. Then the hairy immature style grows upward through the stamen tube, its hairs pushing the pollen up and out. As a result, the pollen is carried by the styles (!) instead of stamens, as it can be observed in the flowering head at center of frame. Upon delivering the pollen, each style splits into two receptive stigmatic branches ready to catch cross-pollen brought by insects, i.e., starts functioning as a "normal" pistil (see the other, older flowering head at right).