THE MAGIC OF SEEDS
All plant life starts here, so let’s celebrate the everyday miracle of the seeds in our gardens, urges Susie White
All plant life starts here. Susie White celebrates the everyday miracle of the seeds in our gardens.
“I have a stronger connection with plants I have grown from seed than any I have bought”
Aseed holds the possibility of a future plant. It is a miraculous yet everyday event. As a child, I was fascinated by the horse chestnuts that would germinate in the leaf mould. I’d dig one up to look at it, a snaking white root breaking from a conker, a bright new leaf shaped like the palm of my hand. Seeds still thrill and amaze me. In my garden, I have a stronger connection with plants I have grown from seed than with any that I have bought.
A seed contains an embryo – the young root and shoot that will grow into a plant – and generally a food store to kick-start it, all wrapped in a protective coat. It takes the right conditions to ‘wake up’ a seed: moisture, air, light and temperature. What these triggers are will have evolved to suit the plant’s individual habitat.
For field poppies, the main trigger is light. The little seeds of Papaver rhoeas can lie dormant for many decades, waiting for that moment when cultivation or soil disturbance brings them to the surface. Their developmental block on germination is lost as they are exposed to light but, hidden in soil, they lie waiting. Then, in one brief season, they germinate, flower, set seed and die, daubing cornfields in fire-engine red. That is why poppies bloomed en masse in the battlefields of Flanders, becoming adopted as the symbol of Remembrance.
Many wildflowers produce masses of seeds to maximise the chances of germinating, given the right conditions. Nettles produce huge quantities that are food for many seed-eating birds, such as house sparrows and chaffinches. Thistles are an important food source for goldfinches and other farmland birds; siskins and finches feed on knapweed and grasses; mice eat the ridged seeds of wild carrot.
Some plants have used the attraction of this food source as a clever way of distributing their progeny. Yew trees attract waxwings and thrushes with their ruby-red berries – the birds eat the fleshy arils while the poisonous seed passes through to be deposited further away. Other trees, such as rowan and bird cherry, or juicy blackberries and wild raspberries, reward birds for their sowing services by providing tasty fruits. Jays and squirrels bury acorns as stashes for winter food, and the ones that get forgotten will germinate to become young trees.
Animals – including humans – are also useful in spreading seeds about. Forget-me-nots, agrimony and avens stick to my gloves when I’m gardening and I take care after a walk not to bring back the hooked seedheads of burdock attached to my clothes. It was through examining their burrs under a microscope that George de Mestral came up with the idea for Velcro fastening. And how tempting it is for children to scrunch up a ball of goosegrass and throw it at an unsuspecting back.
Some seedpods explode. Among the delightful local names for greater stitchwort – I especially like ‘daddy’s shirt buttons’ – is ‘popgun’, inspired by the way the seed capsules snap open as they fire out their seeds. Himalayan balsam, an invasive intruder along our river systems, owes its success to the catapulting mechanism of its seedpods. Gorse, broom, mole plant and stork’s-bill all fling their seeds well away from the original plant.
Harnessing the wind is yet another technique that plants have evolved. Sycamore seeds twirl to the ground like mini helicopters, dandelion clocks are
blown apart in a puff of wind, thistledown and willowherb become sucked along by the wind of traffic on motorways and railways.
This potential for spreading life is something that thrills botanist Dr Trevor Dines of the conservation charity Plantlife. “There’s a breathtaking and almost indescribable magic to the unexpected appearance of a plant from seed,” he says. “From a poppy popping up from a pavement crack to an orchid springing up in an unmown lawn, it’s a demonstration of nature’s hand at work, which our own hands just cannot match.”
If we harness this vitality in our gardens, giving plants the freedom to choose where they want to grow, the result is a relaxed and natural effect. Collecting and sowing our own seed is a chance to marvel at their wonderful diversity and beauty.
SEEDS ON YOUR PATCH
My style of gardening is of free-flowing planting inspired by the hay meadows of the North Pennines. I grow 70 species of wildflowers, cheerfully mixed in with cultivated varieties, and I especially value the random unexpected nature of self-seeders.
“If we harness this vitality in our gardens, the result is a relaxed and natural effect”