How Seeds Make Our World a Better Place

Today I thought that I would write a simple essay on how and why seeds matter.  I will start off with discussing about them as a food source.

Seeds come in all sorts of interesting shapes and sizes.  Among these shapes and sizes are some seeds that are quite delicious!  For instance, the sunflower seed is one of the most well-known edible seeds.  People have used them as salad toppings, little crunchy bits in energy bars, or simply as a snack for years!  For many, the sunflower seed plays quite a large role in their diet.

Now Let's say that you are on a nature hike in the woods with your friends.  I want you to look around. What do you see?  You see plants of many varieties.  Some of the plants are small, others are large, and still others are somewhere in-between.  Of course this is obvious, but almost all of these plants come from seeds. The mighty oak tree, the small blackberry bush, and the wild flowers growing by the sparkling pond all come from seeds.  These seeds generally have some kind of protective coating, as well as some method of transportation.

First of all, I will tell you about the seed's protective coating.  The coating can be anything from a piece of fruit to a hard shell.  Let's use the apple as an example.  Once you finish eating all the fruit on an apple, you will see the core.  In the core, you will see many small brown apple seeds.  The protective coating for these seeds was the delicious apple that you just ate.

Here is an example of a fuzzy dandelion.

Now we move on to discussing the transportation of several kinds of seeds.  Seeds move from location to location in many ways.  One way is how certain kinds can stick to people and animals.  We all know the things I'm talking about.  Those nasty, irritating, and poky little demonic pickers that ruin our clothes and cause our pet's fur to become matted.  Believe it or not, how they stick to us is quite an ingenious form of transportation for these seeds.  Once they stick to an animal or a person, they can travel long distances until they finally fall off and grow into another poky plant.  Another method of transportation that I think I should mention is how seeds can travel by being eaten.  As gross as this sounds, it happens a lot, and is crucial to the survival of plants of various kinds.  Once an animal or person eats a fruit that contains seeds, the seeds will come out the other end.  If the seeds are lucky, they will land in a place where they can successfully grow into healthy strong plants.  Some seeds also have the advantage of being able to float through the air like little fairies.  A perfect example of this is the dandelion, which when it starts to die, forms these fuzzy things in place of it's petals.  When we make a wish on these fuzzy things, they will carry lots of seeds through the air.  Once these land, the ones that find profitable soil will grow into more dandelions and the process repeats itself.

I hope that you have enjoyed this essay, and please let me know what you think!