The mystery seeds from last week were…
Nasturtium seeds (Genus Tropaeolum)!
These colorful plants were originally from South America, but are now grown worldwide.
Some people use nasturtium flowers in salads (make sure to use organically-grown). They have a spicy flavor.
When looking up information on nasturtiums, I found some websites with recipes for pickling the seeds. Does anyone know if this is real?
Hint: These seeds are about the size of a large pea.
What do you think they are?
Edit: The answer is now posted.
We didn’t get any guesses last week for the mystery seed. I was hoping that someone would bite into a sweet, dried fruit, pull out the seed and say, “Aha! The mystery seed was a date seed!”
There are a lot of palm trees growing in the Phoenix metropolitan area of Arizona. One of my favorites is the date palm.
They have a lovely shape.
Although Phoenix dactylifera is the scientific name, date palms are probably originally from northern Africa.
Date Tree photo self-taken for Wikipedia by Balaram Mahalder
There are a number of different cultivars of date palms. The fruit vary somewhat in shape, size, and of course, flavor.
The book, A Seed is Sleepy, by Dianna Hutts Aston and Sylvia Long, tells about a scientist finding a seed of an extinct date palm that was thousands of years old. When the scientist planted the seed, it grew!
See if you can find a date seed and plant it (just make sure it hasn’t been cooked). Let me know if you grow one.
For more information, see Roberta Gibson Writes.
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