Category: Seed of the Week (Page 42 of 167)

As a run up to our 200th Mystery Seed, we are doing few new challenges as a contest.  The idea of the challenges will be to introduce some real world reasons why someone might need to identify seeds.

Challenge 3.

Scenario:  A crime has been committed in Pennsylvania and the police trace the truck to Phoenix, Arizona. The owner swears his truck has never left Phoenix. You are the investigator and you spot this in the pick up bed:

What does the information in the photograph above tell you?

Edit: This week the first person to correctly identify the “seed” in a comment gets 5 points and the first person to explain what it means in the comments gets 5 points. Further correct answers receive 2 points each. Good luck!

Challenge 3 is now closed. The answer is now posted.

Only 5 more challenges to go.

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Answer to challenge 1:

Challenge 1 is now closed. The seeds with the fringes were from a brittlebush, Encelia farinosa. Thank you to everyone who participated.

The answers to challenge 2 will be revealed next week.

New mystery seeds and Seed of the Week answers are posted on Tuesdays.

As a run up to our 200th Mystery Seed, we are doing few new challenges as a contest.  The idea of the challenges will be to introduce some real world reasons why someone might need to identify seeds.

Challenge 2.

Your friend gave you a wonderful gourmet bean soup mix. You’d like to buy more, but it is very expensive. If you could identify all the beans in the mix, you could put it together using cheaper beans from the bulk area of the grocery store. Time to make the grocery list.

Here’s another view:

For this challenge you may give commonly-used names, as long as it is likely those names would be used in the bulk section of your grocery store.

Scoring for challenge 2:  2 points for being the first person to correctly identify an ingredient, 1 point for each additional correct answer. Thus, if the first person to respond gets all 7 correct, he or she will get 14 points. If the second person to respond gets all 7 correct, he or she will get 7 points. Please use the same name for all the challenges so I can keep track of your points. Good luck!

Edit:  Challenge 2 is now closed. The answers will be posted in challenge 4.

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Looking for the answers to challenge 1? I’m going to wait one more week to let everyone give it a try before I reveal the answer and close the challenge.

New mystery seeds and Seed of the Week answers are posted on Tuesdays.

As a run up to our 200th Mystery Seed, let’s do a few new challenges as a bit of a contest.  The idea of the challenges will be to introduce some real world reasons why someone might need to identify seeds.

For incentives, I’ll put together some prizes for the top three people who win the most points via these challenges, to be revealed on our 200th post. I’m thinking prizes like a children’s book, a print of one of my photographs from the blog, or some seed packets.

Challenge 1.

You are an entomologist who is studying ants. You encounter a harvester ant nest where the ants have piled their discarded food outside the nest entrance.

You need to identify those grayish seeds with the white fringe to find out what plants the harvester ants are using in their environment.

Here’s a closer look at the seeds:

Hint:  these mystery seeds have been featured on this blog.

Scoring for challenge 1:  1 point for leaving a comment with an idea (one per person, please), 5 points for the first comment with the correct answer. Please use the same name for all the challenges so I can keep track of your points.

Do you recognize what plant these seeds are from? Good luck!

Edit:  This challenge is now closed. The answer is posted at the bottom of challenge 3.

New mystery seeds and Seed of the Week answers are posted on Tuesdays.