Look what’s back!
I was able to get some new photographs for Mystery Seed of the Week. In fact, I’m set for new Seed of the Week posts for the next few months while I develop some other materials behind the scenes.
Without further ado, we have some funny-shaped seeds.
Do you recognize what plant the seeds are from? If you choose to, please leave a comment with your ideas.
(New mystery seeds and Seed of the Week answers are posted on Tuesdays.)
After 220 mystery seeds, it is time to step back and evaluate where we want to go from here. Although seeds are incredibly beautiful and fascinating, frankly it is becoming increasingly difficult to gather new material each week. Therefore, Seed of the Week will be taking a brief sabbatical.
Some options for the future are:
Obviously, none of these ideas are mutually exclusive.
If you have any suggestions for what would be useful additions to this series, ideas for collaborations, or have comments about the different options, your input would be greatly appreciated.
Our mystery seeds in the “pod” were from a lovely plant called Thurber’s cotton, Gossypium thurberi.
If allowed to reach its full potential, Thurber’s cotton is a large shrub or small tree, reaching up to 15 feet tall. It is native to Arizona, and is also called Arizona or desert cotton.
Although I called it a pod not to give away the answer, this structure is actually a “boll.” If you look closely, you can see the white fuzz of “cotton” around the seeds. There usually isn’t enough fiber to bother trying to harvest it, though.
Thurber’s cotton plants have palmate leaves, mostly with three lobes. The leaves fall off in the winter.
The best part about the plant are the delicate, cupped flowers with a hint of pink.
Have you ever seen cotton growing? How does this plant compare?
Interested in finding out more?
Firefly Forest has more photographs
Check out Bug of the Week tomorrow for more about this plant.
For more information, see Roberta Gibson Writes.
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