eli5-How do seeds work???? I was just eating an apple and for some reason the unappreciated potential of the apple seeds struck me.
In: Biology
Fruit seeds are distributed by the animals that eat the seeds – fruit exist as an incentive to eat the seeds.
Seeds are indigestible, unlike the rest of the fruit, so it passes through the digestive system and ends up in poo, where it germinates using the nutrients from the poo.
Then it’s the normal plant growth cycle.
But if you’re asking how seeds know to germinate, then there’s a reason why plants (and seed banks!) know to keep their seeds dry. Seeds germinate (start growing) in the presence of water, since fertile soil is usually wet.
Apple seeds have the potential to create a new and different type of apple. You can plant them and years later see if you like the fruit.
But since the apples in the shop have all been selected as ones that people really like, either for flavour, growing well, being easy to store or combination of things like that, the chances are that any new apple is likely to be worse. Growing an apple tree from seed is a big gamble – you could discover something amazing, but probably you’ll get apples that are not very nice.
If you want to grow apples without the big gamble, you need to use a cutting from an apple tree of a known variety and grow a new tree from that instead. The fruits on that will be of the same variety and should taste very similar to those from the tree you took the cutting from and others of that variety.
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