Did you know? Seeds

How plants spread seeds

Plants have many ways of spreading or dispersing their seeds.

• gravity - heavy seeds will just fall off the plant.
• wind - very fine seeds will blow away on the wind. Some seeds have special parachutes or wings to help them fly, for example, dandelions.
• hooks - the seeds are covered with hooks which catch on to a passing animals' fur; they then catch a free ride to another place where they are rubbed off later.
• animals - the seeds look like tasty treats for the animals to eat, but they pass undigested through the animal. Animals, including birds and insects, sometimes bury the seeds.
• pepperpot - the seed-pod is like a little pepperpot and sprinkles the seeds over quite a wide area.
• exploding - the seed-pod bursts suddenly, throwing all the seeds out over a large area.
• floating - some seeds grow with air trapped in them, so they can float away from the parent plant.

Interesting facts

• The largest seed in the world is the double coconut. It can measure up to 50cm (1.6ft) around the middle! Coconuts have a fibrous coating and an air space inside them, because they need to be able to float to a new home. Some coconuts have floated 2,000km over the sea before they find dry land!
• Seeds provide the world's daily food. Your breakfast cereal and toast, your pasta or pizza lunch and your rice dish for tea all started life as seeds from different grasses. Read more about cereals in our Did you know? article.
• Some orchid seed-pods hold 3 million seeds.
• Kapok is soft, fluffy stuff that comes from a seed-case. Years ago it was used to fill life jackets, because it is light, strong and waterproof. Nowadays, modern plastics have replaced it.
• Some seeds found in frozen soil in Canada were grown and produced flowers - the seeds were thought to be more than 10,000 years old!
• There are some very dangerous seeds, such as those that come from deadly nightshade; two berries could kill you. Even more dangerous are the seeds from the Castor-oil plant - one bean will kill an adult.
• Most oak trees don't grow acorns until they are at least 50 years old. If you have planted an acorn, how old will you be before you can plant its acorns?

Activity

Try growing an oak tree from an acorn in our home-grown project.