Review: May 2009

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At the beginning of one chapter of this entertaining and charmingly illustrated book on seeds, there’s a sketch of two beans engaged in what, if they were human, might be called necking. Vegetables don’t really cuddle and coo, of course, but according to Jonathan Silvertown, a professor of ecology at the Open University in England, when it comes to reproduction in the plant kingdom, practically anything else goes.

Silvertown’s short essays sample the broad panorama of strategies plants employ to spread their spawn around. In one chapter he describes winged and gossamer seeds, delicately structured because they have evolved to be spread by the wind. Gliders produced by a tropical vine named Alsomitra macrocarpa sport wingspans of nearly five inches, and if there’s a good breeze they can travel hundreds of yards in search of a good spot for germination. The course of true love, though, doesn’t always run smooth—seeds that travel too far run the risk of landing outside the hospitable environment of their parents and failing to thrive.

Other plants employ deception to get animals to provide a motive force that they do not possess. The seeds of many Australian plants are equipped with fatty warts called elaiosomes, which are as attractive to ants as apples are to humans. The ants carry the seeds to their nests, bite off the succulent elaiosome, and toss the seed on their underground trash heap—and so the seed finds a safe place to sprout.

Seed stories like these are enlivened by a potpourri of facts and figures. The oldest seed ever germinated? A 2,000-year-old date seed found in the ruins of Masada, near the shores of the Dead Sea. The smallest seeds? Those of some orchids, which weigh only a ten-millionth of a gram.

For all its erudition, however, this is not an encyclopedia of botanical lore, nor a definitive text, but rather a little gem of science writing that deserves a spot on any natural history lover’s bedside bookstand. To be sure, it may help you make small talk at a convention of palynologists or Burpee seed salesmen, but, at its root, it is simply a delight to read.