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A Seedy Subject

© B. J. Barton

When the flowers have dropped their petals and the leaves have gone brown, Colorado fields and gardens look dreary and dead. But Wait! Don't despair. This is a time when we should look around for miracles. And just to make it interesting, we can do it through the eyes of two famous naturalists and writers who wrote more than 100 years apart from each other.

We are talking about seeds, of course. They are the miraculous containers of the DNA blueprints and energy that reproduce life in its many specific forms. Back in the 1850's, it was commonly believed that some plants appeared spontaneously, without a root, or cutting, or seed. One naturalist who did not accept this idea was Henry David Thoreau, and he spent much of the last years of his life observing, recording, and writing about how plants could suddenly appear in new places far away from the "mother" plant.

While Thoreau is most famous for his book, Walden, about man's place in nature, he also wrote much more about his detailed scientific investigations of nature in his little corner of the world, Concord, Massachussetts. Unfortunately, Thoreau was out tramping around in the woods in December 1860 and got wet and chilled. He caught a cold. It never really went away, and eventually he got tuberculosis, but he continued his studies, writing and lecturing until shortly before his death in May 1862 at the age of 45. His manuscript, The Dispersal of Seeds, was no more than a rought draft and was not published until 1993, when it was included, along with parts of other manuscripts that he left behind, in a book called Faith in a Seed (see reference below).

Thoreau wrote: "Though I do not believe that a plant will spring up where no seed has been, I have great faith in a seed. Convince me that you have a seed there, and I am ready to expect wonders."

So, what did Thoreau learn in those years before his death? Quite a bit, for a time when scientific methods were in their infancy. His passion for nature and his detailed observations helped him to understand the essential relationships between plants and animals, and to record the many different mechanisms plants use to disperse seeds. Here is just a sample of what he described in his journals in his almost poetical style.

Pine cones burst open when ripe, making their seeds available to squirrels and other rodents and certain birds. These animals and birds cache (hide) seeds in the ground to eat during the winter. However, they don't find all of them, so many are left in the ground to germinate.

Pine Cones

Milkweed seeds

Mesquite seed pods

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