Seeds – dead or alive?

Let this retired Chemistry (and a spattering of Biology) teacher try and be as clear as a crystallised amino acid.

  1. All dead seeds are dead – they have shuffled off their mortal coil

  2. All other seeds are alive – dormant, resting, inert; all these wonderful Norwegian Blue parrot contributions are somewhat nailed on the fence

One of the great joys in teaching is to ask a provocative question and let a class or an audience battle it out. Quite often, in fact, they know the answer but need to follow the breadcrumbs from what they already know to the answer, reversing out of some blind alleys along the way.

Here’s what you probably already know. (Oh! I should warn you: if you’re mad enough to read this…you are being drawn into a theological trap. You have been warned)

Pollen grains contain male sex cells or gametes. Along comes an unsuspecting bee; the pollen grains stick to the bee’s back and legs, are carried to the next flower, and transferred to the female stigma. (Faint memories from school days resurfacing?). The pollen grain then grows a tube down through the stigma to the ovaries where the female eggs are located. Down the tube fall the male sex cells, now liberated from the pollen grains, and they fertilise the eggs to form seeds, which mature, grow, and harden. That’s pollination and fertilisation. Still awake?

‘Unless a seed falls into the ground and dies it remains alone; but, if it dies, it produces many seeds’

Recap. The male sex cells are alive. Not much good dead! The female eggs awaiting fertilisation are also alive. Therefore, the fertilised eggs, called seeds, are alive. But…

Only a small part of the seed is alive. Most of it is a food store. The living cells located in the ‘embryo’ of the seed just tick over. They are taking in oxygen, respiring, and excreting carbon dioxide but very, very, very slowly. Nevertheless, all seeds (unless they have died) are alive and well – but one could hardly say their life is that exciting compared with what could happen after germination.

That seed will exist like that unless (usually) it falls into the ground. Even in the ground, it will remain dormant, unless the ground is moist and at the right temperature. But given the right conditions germination follows. The living cells in the dormant seed wake up and start reproducing…they take their food for the growth of the shoot and the root from the food store until they can poke their first leaves above ground and make food for themselves by photosynthesis. By this time the seed itself has vanished. The food store has been raided and the cells that were in the seed have been transformed into plant cells.

Jesus frequently spoke about nature, seeds, farming, harvest, birds, the sky and so on. Perhaps one of his most profound nature parables is found in John 12v24:

‘Unless a seed falls into the ground and dies it remains alone; but, if it dies, it produces many seeds’

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Jonah’s 3rd Day