| MadSci Network: Botany |
That is a very good question, Lori! The answer is no, not all plants come from seeds. While many plants do produce seeds, there are many that do not. Also, the seeds from some plants take a long time or need certain conditions to sprout making them difficult to work with. And some plants do produce seeds, but there are easier ways to grow it! Let me give you some examples... English Ivy is a really neat plant. It doesn't flower (and seeds come from flowers). But there is a really easy way to make a new plant. Just cut a stem off and put the end in a glass of water. Roots will grow in just a few days! How about a potato? It flowers and produces seed, but it is much easier just to put a chunk of potato in the ground and let it grow! Lillies, tulips, and other flowers that grow from bulbs are also examples of this. Using science we can use tiny pieces of roots and leaves to grow whole new plants. These tiny pieces are often grown in test tubes until they are big enough to be put in a pot. This method is called micropropagation and allows us to get a whole bunch of plants really fast. So even if a plant grows from seed, we might be able to grow it another way as well!! I hope I answered your question! Eric Biddinger Educator, 4-H/Youth Purdue Cooperative Extension David Hershey, MadSci Moderator, adds: There are also thousands of species of seedless plants that reproduce via spores. Seedless nonvascular plants are mosses, liverworts, and hornworts. Seedless vascular plants include ferns, horsetails or scouring rushes, whisk ferns (genus Psilotum), club mosses (genus Lycopodium), quillworts (genus Isoetes) and spike mosses (genus Selaginella). Seedless Vascular Plants Seedless Plants Seedless Vascular Plants
Try the links in the MadSci Library for more information on Botany.