Re: do big seeds produce big plants?

Complete question:
          MY daughter has a school science project that due for end march, 2001.
She is in grade 4. The title of the project is big seeds produce big plants.we 
looked in refrences but we cannot information. Also she collected big seeds 
like  Mango seed, Avcodo seed, coconut seed  and so on.pleae will information 
about this topic and examples some big seeds with height plants they produce.
    
Reply:

If this has to be an experiment then you would probably want to confine the 
project to a single species, such as bean. The idea would be to weigh the bean 
seeds, then sprout them, and weigh the plant to determine if bigger seeds 
produce bigger plants.

If you intend to compare seeds of many different species then it becomes more 
of a library project where you would need to find how tall the plants normally 
are for the seeds you collected.  If you have a seed, a good encyclopedia will 
usually give the average or maximum height for the plant. Get a librarian to 
help you if you have trouble finding info. 

The world's tallest tree at over 300 feet, Redwood (Sequoia sempervirens) has a 
very small seed relative to a coconut. Redwood averages 120,000 seeds per pound 
according to the reference so the hypothesis of "big seed, big plant" will not 
always hold true.


Reference

Forest Service. 1974. Seeds of Woody Plants in the United States. Agriculture 
Handbook 450. Washington, DC: USDA