Season of seeds
It’s our gain as nature gets busy taking care of its own
Eight years ago, I literally ran into a pin oak ( Quercus palustris) while removing weeds with my hoe in the front garden.
What to do? A pin oak is not all that easy to grow. So I left it there to grow tall and narrow, as is its habit, and to fill in that corner of the garden. It must have been a gift from one of the squirrels who, with notoriously short memories, bury nuts and seeds in the fall to enjoy at a later date. In this case that date would never come — a tree germinated and grew, instead.
The idea of celebrating seeds and their role in our world had never occurred to me before. Not until I read The Triumph of Seeds: How Grains, Nuts, Kernels, Pulses, and Pips Conquered the Plant Kingdom and Shaped Human History by Thor Hanson (Basic Books).
The author has a knack for telling stories, using humour and a wellpaced monologue to provide some fascinating information.
Five lessons I learned from The Triumph of Seeds: 1. Seedy history. First of all, seeds are not — and never were — produced for our use. We adapted to seeds and hence enjoy a poppy-seeded bagel, made with seed from wheat, with our morning coffee that is made from the seed of the coffee plant. Seeds are produced as selfpreservation: they produce baby plants.
The history of seeds begins with early gymnosperms that, “learned to cover up. They did it in much the same way that people do after a bath, and for similar reasons.” The mother plant of the earliest seeds wrapped them in carpel to enclose and protect the developing egg. 2. Seedlings don’t suckle. When the seedling produces its first real leaves, it is on its own. Effectively pushed out of the nest where it either learns to grow. Or it doesn’t.
To gain germination, a seed must first come in contact with moisture. This is true for virtually all seeds, including the ones in the bag of grass seed that you have in your shed. 3. The purpose of fruit. Why do trees produce fruit? The answer is that the fleshy stuff around each packet of seeds in, say, an apple is there to protect and nourish the seeds. Once mature fruit drops on the ground the white apple flesh is consumed by the seeds as they prepare themselves for germination. A host of bacteria and fungi provides an assist to this process and the skin provides protection for a while. The skin rots, exposing the seeds to their new home and, hopefully for the seeds, a new home where they can put down roots and enjoy growing a family of their own.
Seeds have evolved over a much longer period than we have. As author Hanson explains, they have developed very sophisticated methods for reproduction, many of which we are only beginning to understand. The oak tree that found its way into my garden was not only planted there by an errant squirrel, but chances are very good that her sharp teeth provided just the right striations to encourage the oak seed to expand, split its shell and put down a root (which every seed does before it does anything else). 4. Seeds are a part of our language for a reason. It seems to me that we understand intuitively much more about this than we let on. Our common language is riddled with references to an exercise being “fruitful,” or another being “fruitless,” one side of town being “seedy” and an idea or project that has lost its bloom as “going to seed.” We use seeds in almost every meal that we enjoy, to make coffee, to bake bread, and to marinate a steak (peppercorns). 5. The future of seeds. We don’t have to worry about seeds in the big picture. They will continue to evolve as nature changes. You can be sure of one thing: Crabgrass will continue to seed itself and thrive long after we are gone.
Hanson reminds us: “All of the elaborate and remarkable features found in seeds — from nourishment to endurance to protection — will persist only so long as they benefit future generations (of plants). In a sense, that is also the root of their deep cultural significance. Seeds give us a tangible connection from past to future, a reminder of human relationships as well as the natural rhythms of season and soil.”
In my opinion, The Triumph of Seeds really is a winner. Mark Cullen is an expert gardener, author, broadcaster and garden editor of Reno & Decor magazine. Get his free monthly newsletter at markcullen.com. Watch him on CTV Canada AM every Wednesday at 8:45 a.m. Email him at groundskeeper@markcullen.com. Follow him on Twitter @MarkCullen4 and Facebook.