(Phys.org) -- Although pointing high-energy lasers at the sky to cause pouring rain is currently a high-tech dream, the motivation behind controlling the weather has existed since the days of our ancient ancestors. Throughout ...
(Phys.org) -- Most animals move around by using their appendages, such as legs, wings, or fins. But a few exceptional creatures employ rolling as a mode of locomotion. Included in this group are rolling salamanders, spiders, ...
(PhysOrg.com) -- Many trees disperse their seeds by releasing "helicopters," those single-winged seeds that are also called "samaras." As these seeds fall to the ground, their wing causes them to swirl and spin in a process ...
A team of climate scientists from France, Russia and Germany has found that ancient viruses dormant for tens of thousands of years in permafrost can infect modern amoeba when they are revived. For their study, reported on ...
Hundreds of animals eat fruit, from toucans to fruit bats to maned wolves to humans. But most fruit-bearing plants evolved relatively recently in Earth's history, showing up for the first time in the Cretaceous, the final ...
Ecology
Aug 16, 2022
0
263
Australian researchers have located what is believed to be the largest plant on Earth—and they estimate it's at least 4,500 years old.
Plants & Animals
Jun 1, 2022
2
3867
In one of the first studies of its kind, researchers have gauged how biodiversity loss of birds and mammals will impact plants' chances of adapting to human-induced climate warming.
Ecology
Jan 13, 2022
0
439
Scientists seeking to unravel the details of how plants produce and accumulate oil have identified a new essential component of the assembly line. They discovered a particular sterol—a molecule related to cholesterol—that ...
Biotechnology
Sep 22, 2021
15
52
As the world continues to warm, many arid regions that already have marginal conditions for agriculture will be increasingly under stress, potentially leading to severe food shortages. Now, researchers at MIT have come up ...
Ecology
Jul 8, 2021
0
129
Migratory birds carry most seeds in the wrong direction to help plants cope with climate change, new research shows.
Ecology
Jun 23, 2021
2
32
A seed ( /ˈsiːd/ (help·info)), referred to as a kernel in some plants, is a small embryonic plant enclosed in a covering called the seed coat, usually with some stored food. It is the product of the ripened ovule of gymnosperm and angiosperm plants which occurs after fertilization and some growth within the mother plant. The formation of the seed completes the process of reproduction in seed plants (started with the development of flowers and pollination), with the embryo developed from the zygote and the seed coat from the integuments of the ovule.
Seeds have been an important development in the reproduction and spread of flowering plants, relative to more primitive plants like mosses, ferns and liverworts, which do not have seeds and use other means to propagate themselves. This can be seen by the success of seed plants (both gymnosperms and angiosperms) in dominating biological niches on land, from forests to grasslands both in hot and cold climates.
The term seed also has a general meaning that predates the above — anything that can be sown i.e. "seed" potatoes, "seeds" of corn or sunflower "seeds". In the case of sunflower and corn "seeds", what is sown is the seed enclosed in a shell or hull, and the potato is a tuber.
This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA
