When a seed decides to take root, it makes a tremendous gamble. Seeds are embryos encased in nutrients; a seed scientist once described them to me as a “plant in a box with its lunch”. The blueprint for the whole plant is in there, dormant but alive the whole time. A seed might blow around for a decade, waiting patiently for the right conditions to poke out a first root. Once it sends this first root out, it has given up any chance of movement; immobilised, it will now face whatever threat comes – wind, snow, drought, animal mouths – from right where it stands.
The baby plant root has forty-eight hours after it decides to emerge to locate water and nutrients, and then push out a leaf or two and begin photosynthesising, before it runs out of resources and dies. The first green parts of any plant are folded, preassembled and waiting inside the seed. This preassembled plantlet bears little resemblance to the plant itself; it consists of one or two cartoonish green lobes on a short green stem, the manifestation of the plant emoji 🌱, and it is entirely temporary. It unfolds and inflates, filling with the first draught of sap pulled in by that pioneer root, and begins the job of photosynthesis. If it is successful, this proto-plant, this space shuttle into the world of air and light, will be cast off like a rocket booster and replaced with real leaves, of which the variations are infinite. Only after this trial period, this checking to see what sticks, does the plant come to resemble the one it is meant to be, mantling itself in the features of its lineage then adapting them to a new environment.
The above is an extract from a wonderful book called ‘The Light Eaters’. A book on the new science of plant intelligence by Zoe Schlanger. The publishers kindly gave permission for me to reproduce it.
Seaford is a town blessed to have green spaces, grass verges, open gardens and is surrounded by countryside. Next time you go out for a wander and see a little plant waving in the wind or even struggling to emerge between the cracks in paving give a thought to its brave and perilous start in life.
The Light Eaters by Zoe Schlanger, published by HarperCollins UK.
ISBN 978-0-00844534-8
Celebrating Seaford 