#seed morphology

[continent-of-wild-endeavor]

I just discovered/realized that butter beans are designed to fling their seeds for dispersal.

Normally you harvest them green, so I hadn't seen them like this before, but garden things got away from me and a bunch of them dried on the plants. Which is fine - still edible, more storable! - but see how fat those hanging pods look? Much wider than the beans inside, because they're under tension, and if you touch them, they pop! open, scattering beans about. See how they twist?

This makes sense, evolutionarily, but it does make harvesting them a little harder. Really gotta get your hand around them.

[continent-of-wild-endeavor]

Shagbark hickory (Carya ovata), showing bark, old seeds, and the difference between its nuts and those of the common local hickory (ok, but which species is that? I should know, but I don’t). The hike was mostly in a floodplain, and featured species typical of that environment.

[pragmaculture]

Flowers and seeds of some edible friends from the Polygonaceae family. Rhubarb (Rheum rhabarbarum) and sorrel (Rumex acetosa)

[mossofthewoodsjewelry]

Ghost Flower (Monotropa uniflora), turning to seed