Family Guide to Seeds | Suite101.com

Posted by
Barbara M. Martin
Mar 10, 2007

When I saw the title to this page "Family Guide to Seeds" I thought, how quaint, they're telling us the page is family friendly and ok for work viewing. But really what the word family refers to here is which plant family a seed belongs to. Plant families are one of those latin-y things most gardeners might prefer to avoid or ignore learning about but in fact they can be kind of interesting in an odd sort of way. And it can be helpful to know if certain plants are related in cases where you are seeing disease problems for example; often, related plants share susceptibility or resistance to certain diseases.

The other reason to take a peek at this site is the photography. It's superb. Each seed photograph is like a fine art portrait. You will be amazed and delighted by the huge variation among the different seeds, even when the plants are related to each other. Sometimes it takes a little artful viewing to bring excitement to the mundane. For instance, I clicked on C for Cucurbitaceae (class Magnoliopsida) because we all know what a cucumber seed looks like from eating them in our salads and what a pumpkin seed looks like from picking them out of our Halloween jacko'lanterns. Who knew there are 120 genera and each one looks different! Just gorgeous.

Last but not least, if you discover a random envelope of saved seeds -- unlabeled -- in the back of a drawer, you can use the key to try to identify the seeds. Now that's cool. It's from the Agricultural Research Service. Take a look at the Family Guide to Seeds.