Our mystery seeds today are hard to spot.
When they are all mixed up with the other flower parts in the seed heads, it is hard to tell the seeds from the debris. They are beige and not very distinct.
photograph by Steve Hurst @ USDA-NRCS PLANTS Database
Does this cleaned up, close-up view help?
If you care to, please let us know in the comments if you have an idea what plant this week’s mystery seeds come from.
Edit: the answer is now posted.
Our mystery last week had to do with seeds.
The brown bumps on the outside of the tomato were the clue.
You might have been able to guess if I had shown you this view instead. Do you see the stems and green bits under the tomato skin?
Peeling back the tomato covering, those are tomato seedlings sprouting inside the tomato fruit.
If you open it up to the center, you can see the seeds are sprouting from inside the tomato. It wasn’t rotten or mushy at all. All the tomatoes in this cluster that I had purchased from the grocery store had sprouting seeds.
It turns out that it isn’t all that uncommon for certain cultivars of tomatoes to do this, particularly the “tomatoes-on-the-vine” variety from the grocery store.
The first part of this video explains it is called vivipary when the seeds sprout inside the fruit, usually when still attached to the mother plant.
We also regularly see seeds sprouting inside our pink grapefruit towards the end of the season.
These are from fruit still hanging on the tree.
Can you see the long root?
Have you ever opened a fruit and found a seed sprouting?
Now this is mysterious.
Do you know what the brown bumps on this tomato are?
Hint: they aren’t seeds, but they just might be related to seeds.
If you care to, please let us know if you have an idea what the bumps are.
Edit: The answer is now posted.
For more information, see Roberta Gibson Writes.
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