Information on Seeds
Seeds come in all shapes and size some are winged, spiked, round and flat. Even though they can look so different they are all the same in that they store the information for a plant’s entire life from sprouting to growing into a huge tree, flowering and dying.
Some seeds can be tiny for example the poppy has very small seeds but this plant is not small it has large leaves and beautiful flowers.
Seeds can be hidden in delicious fruits that animals feed on, swallow the seed and poop out somewhere else where the seed can grow.
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Can seeds travel?
Seeds can travel around the planet wherever the wind, animals and we will take them. This is a problem because when we bring plant seeds from other countries and continents they can affect our ecosystems. These are called invasive species and they compete with native plants to take their food and space.
So make it your job to tell people the importance of protecting our ecosystems by not introducing invasive plants. You can also tell your parents not to compost seeds from vegetables but collect and dry them to plant or with some seeds like pumpkin you can roast and eat them.
Facts on seeds – did you know?
- Some seeds in the tropical rainforest decompose in a few days because they have to otherwise fungi and insect will eat them.
- Native English trees like the Oak needs the ground to freeze for its acorns to germinate the next year.
- Try collecting your own seeds, walk around the park and woods to collect tree seeds, sprout them in plant pots at home. Do this in your garden by waiting for the flowers to die and dry out, collect your seeds from the pods and put them in a small brown bag.
- The millennium seed bank at the royal botanic garden Kew stores seeds from every plant they possibly can they have multi-million-pound facility where they keep seeds at a very cool temperature to store them.
- It is not commonly known but plants are going extinct every day many of them before we have identified them and studied their value.
- The pressure of the root bursting through the seed can crack concrete.
- Some seeds from some cacti species can survive thousands of years and still germinate.
- It is amazing how a seed can be kept for years and it still grows when you plant it.
- Seeds are living things which live inside a shell which protects them.
- Inside the shell, they have an embryo which it grows into.
- Inside the seed shell, there is also food which the baby plant will live off when you put it into the soil and feed it water.
- When you plant a seed and it sprouts it is called germination.
- When the plant has eaten all of the food in the shell it pops up and searches for light.
- In Israel, scientists discovered a seed of a date palm tree that was 2000 years old. This ancient seeds sprouted into a new plant now that’s amazing.
Sowing seeds is great fun and watching them grow into plants is even better- have fun.
