Have you ever thought about how, almost magically, a brown, bulldozed or scraped up piece of land turns green with plants again? How do all those plants get there so quickly? Where did they come from? Ok, we know that there are seeds already in the soil, just waiting for their opportunity to germinate. But it's still pretty amazing that nature has developed this process of having new plants always ready to go, in tiny embryonic packages. Seeds allow us to readily raise crops. They replenish the forests we take down. They make burned habitat or lava-covered ground productive again. We take them for granted, confident in the fact that we can do almost anything destructive to acres of land, and as soon as we back off, the land will rapidly green up, with no effort on our part.
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| Violet seeds |
Plants, like all life forms, do not live forever, so they must reproduce. But, luckily for us, most also reproduce in a way that doesn't have to rigidly adhere to a time schedule. They cast themselves into the future via the seeds they produce, which can wait out poor or impossible growth conditions until such time as conditions become favorable. That could be days, weeks, years, even millennia. Imagine if that was not the case, and seeds were only viable for, say, a few days. Would we even be here today if that were true?
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| Wild ginger |
And, what if a plant's seeds just fell at the foot of the parent plant? If they could germinate there, they would then have to compete with the parent for light, water, space, and nutrients. Doesn't seem like a good plan. So, since the parent plant can't move around to place seeds here and there, it has to have some other way to get the seeds dispersed. And that's the subject of our new film, Old Forest or Young Meadow - the Marvel of Seeds.
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| Bluebirds on sumac |
Plants have evolved over many millions of years. In that time, nature has devised some fascinating methods for them to "get the kids out of the house". We've spent the last couple years or so learning about and filming these different dispersal strategies. They take place all around us, but can be so easily overlooked. Some are rather mundane, but others are intriguing; some are surprising and quite entertaining. All are effective. Some, though very common, are almost never observed by anyone. Al Richmond and I spent uncounted days and hours in our favorite haunts to find the best examples we could.
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| Cynipid wasp gall on oak leaf |
Here's a teaser... what do oak leaf galls and walking-stick insects have in common with spring ephemeral wildflowers? Can't answer that one? Well, then I guess you'll want to watch the film.
You'll find Old Forest or Young Meadow - the Marvel of Seeds on the New England Forests Youtube channel.
