Seeds

Howdy and hello there!

My name is Jack. I work as a floral clerk at [Grocery Store]. When people come in and ask me questions about the plants I smile, nod a little, offer some advice that has nothing to do with their question and promptly proceed to hide in the cooler in fear that my assailant will ask too many questions and discover I know nothing. Most of the time these Torqueflowers go away, but sometimes they just keep coming back with more questions. Sometimes I look up answers in a handbook, and sometimes (when I have important things to do, like make rubber band chains) I just flat out lie. What can I say, I’m not a nice person.

Nevertheless, over the past year I’ve spent a lot of time with plants and flowers, and while I don’t have any basic, well-rounded knowledge of plant life, I’ve learned enough to start posing questions. I’ve listened to the things customers tell me, because most customers know more than me, and most of them have their own weird method for plantcare. I’d like to see if their methods hold true. Moreover, I’m starting to worry that I’m not going to transition very well into being an old lady with a jungle in her living room. My hopes! My dreams! My raison d’etre! What will the neighborhood children say if they peek in through the front window and see a mass of neglected, dying tropical plants? The horror! Empty, infertile flowerbeds and a spotty lawn!

So, I’m writing this blog to record my journey through the world of gardening and indoor plant care. If you know as much about plants as you do about the mineral make up of Saturn’s rings, then this is the blog for you!

Pandering aside.

I chose seeds as the basis of my first post. It seems only appropriate. You can’t have a plant without a seed. (Or I guess a clipping, or maybe some cloning technology.) But those other options aside, seeds are the very symbol of potential and life force. Seeds are the beginning, and seeds are the end. So, let’s begin!

Experiment: Water vs. Soil

My hypothesis is: If placed in water, bean seeds will sprout and grow more quickly than if placed in soil. (A marvelous, brilliant question I pose! Surely this will change the face of the agricultural world…. FOREVER.)

Seed Anatomy, Explanation, Procedures.

Allow me to introduce you to the starring seeds of the day:

The mighty pinto bean!

Yes. The dried kind you buy from the grocery store. I chose beans cause I’m hoping I’ll find some luck here, with my name and all. Jack and the Beanstalk and whatnot.

Now, beans are apparently some subclass of seeds known as an angiosperm, which means that they have a nice little ovary to protect their embryonic structure.

blink.

… So… I’m eating ovaries, then? .. This requires further investigation.

It looks like this shell’s been cracked…. YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH

A brief note: A bean is also part of a subclass of angiosperms known as dicot seeds. What this means is that it has two cotyledon structures stuffed in there. What is a cotyledon? Let us beseech the all-knowing google with our banal inquiry!

cot·y·le·don/ˌkätlˈēdn/

Noun:

An embryonic leaf in seed-bearing plants, one or more of which are the first leaves to appear from a germinating seed.

…OKAY!

So what did I find within the seed? Why this, of course. Hearts and all. True story. Girlscout’s honor.

Now, I wrote nutrients on the left hand cotyledon, but that’s really not the truth. The endosperm (the nutritive tissues) are actually just underneath the cotyledons, but I read on the internet (A VERY RELIABLE SOURCE) that the cotyledon in beans tend to just absorb the endosperm and become nutritive tissue themselves. Feel free to correct me!

As for the little mess that isn’t diagrammed, that’s just some crunched up seed coat from the actual cutting process.

(If you’d like to see the seed without all the doodles, here you go! http://img710.imageshack.us/img710/2679/dscn1080g.jpg)

Now on with the damn experiment

Process:

Water Seeds

1. I find a petri-dish like object.

2. I fill it with water.

3. I put seeds inside the water.

4. I wrap it in saran wrap.

5. I take a picture of the beans in water and saran wrap because it looks surreal.

6. ????

7. Profit.

Soil Seeds

1. I purchase some “seed starting” potting soil.

2. I cut an empty Vitamin Water bottle in half and fill it with soil.

3. I proceed to soak the soil within the water bottle until it is thoroughly saturated and rather muddy.

4. I stick the seeds inside the soil.

(yes, I pushed them down into it.)

5. I cover plastic-dirt-thing with saran wrap and do not take a picture because it doesn’t look surreal.

6. ???

7. Profit.

That’s all for now! Thanks for tuning in! I’ll be running other experiments while I wait for these babies to grow. And yes, I’ll let you know which one wins. If you can handle making this experiment anymore exciting than it already is, you might start a pool with your coworkers and bet on which group will grow faster!

Feel free to leave me suggestions for future experiments, questions, or curiosities concerning plants and gardening in your comments!

Links:

My sources for this post were:

http://www.agriscience.msu.edu/2000/2010-2020/…/2023seedanatomy.ppt   –   A powerpoint about seeds.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seeds – A wikipedia page about seeds that I actually didn’t look at.

http://www.iagram.com/index.php/diagrams?func=detail&id=244 – Another chart of dictoyledon seed anatomy.

and what I remember of my highschool biology textbook.